


A bowl of rice and maybe some miso soup

by artsies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Fix-It, Found Families, Gen, Horrors of War, Iruka is the mom friend, Kakashi is the goblin friend, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, i wrote this for me but you are welcome to read it, the one where Iruka struggles with his feelings a lot and is a blind fool, the one where Kakashi struggles with his feelings a lot and is a blind fool
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2020-06-24 03:52:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19715683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artsies/pseuds/artsies
Summary: That night in the forest, as he saved Naruto from Mizuki, Umino Iruka unlocked a new ability within himself that would change the course of history itself… and apparently, it involves a lot of cooking on his part.Oh, and being a soothsayer or some shit.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> #the one where Gai tears his hair out because his friend whose life is a dumpster fire found himself a love interest whose life is also a dumpster fire that is marginally better disguised

**The end of Hazuki (葉月, "Month of Leaves"; August), six years before Naruto’s graduation**

Iruka first meets Naruto when he is sixteen. 

It’s barely been a year since they told him that his jōnin-sensei was killed, just a year since he’s been trying to put himself back together, piece by piece. It’s been a new sort of hell, but through gritted teeth and an iron-clad resolve, he has become a freshly minted chūnin and an afternoon sensei at the Academy. He hadn’t expected it, but he finds himself ready to teach with every fiber of his being: in fact, he prepares with all his might for his last exam of the specialized sewa rank that would allow him to teach as a morning sensei. Life is getting slowly better, getting liveable again, less hellish with each passing day.

Then they tell him that the Nine-tails will be under his care, and he feels like it’s all falling apart.

He barely sleeps the night before classes start, keeps seeing those eyes full of hate, keeps feeling his mother’s rattling breaths under his palms, keeps hearing his father’s voice… keeps struggling, again and again, against that unknown shinobi taking him away from those people he should have died with.

Would have been so much better to die with.

He tries to imagine what the child-fox could even look like, this great horrendous creature he hasn’t seen since that horrible night. He’s only ever heard the half-whispers of the other villagers, but he is sure that it must be like one of those manga characters; a humanized fox, or maybe like a normal boy but with fox-tails that it tries to hide. Either way, he thinks, it has to have very evil eyes. (He has little understanding of how the seal works, to be honest.) 

The next morning, Iruka enters the classroom with a heavy heart and a grim determination to face the monster incarnate, to take revenge if he can for his parents, for ruining his life, to punish and rage and - and… he finds that Uchikawa-sensei's introductions to the class fade into a background noise... because instead of anything he had imagined, there is only a blond little boy sitting there. He is small, so small, younger and skinnier than the others, and he can’t help but notice how he tries to be loud enough to be seen. 

His thoughts falter as his heart begins to yell in rebellion.

Naruto has the sweetest blue eyes.

* * *

**The end of Satsuki (皐月, "Early-rice-planting Month"; May), four years before Naruto’s graduation**

Two years in, when he is just about to be eighteen, the morning sensei - Uchikawa-sensei -, under whom Iruka has been steadily amassing experience retires, and he is booted up into her place as the youngest in the history of the Academy. (Mostly due to budget and staff reasons, honestly.) His afternoon sensei becomes Mizuki, a soft-spoken older man who refused the promotion. He seems kind enough towards Naruto, kinder than anything Iruka would have expected, if a little lax in his teaching.

Naruto.

Having Naruto in his life has changed so many things. It had made Iruka realize how very little he understands the seal by which the fox is contained; so he had dusted off his parents’ books a year ago and now spends his free time in the library, sometimes pestering Sandaime with his questions about fuinjutsu theory at their biweekly meetings where he reports on the boy’s progress. Luckily, the old man humors him, pointing Iruka to more and more scrolls to consult. It makes him think of his father and the scroll he carried on his back, and when he reads, soft memories of brush on paper come back; he cries the first time he recognises the ward against fire as the one his mother used to paint on their door every full moon. It’s sometimes enough to make him never want to look at a seal again.

But he wants to understand how such a small child, with his hay-blond hair and sky-blue eyes, can even live containing in his body such a tremendous evil, so he keeps going.

Not that Naruto is lacking in... vitality. Iruka is also certain that his understanding of karma has by this point surpassed that of any abbot, because Naruto gives him back all the trouble he caused as a student at least twice fold, if not thrice. (But at least he doesn’t have time to think of his jōnin-sensei, or his now dead genin teammates, when he is running around the village yelling at the top of his lungs. So.) Chasing the boy around town becomes a weekly event, a well-rehearsed play filled with yelling, capturing, dragging, punishing, and always, always a meal. This is the most important part; not that the village supplied fare that’s handed out thrice daily in the Academy mess hall is bad, - it’s just, Naruto is so _small_.

And he just doesn't want his student to die of malnutrition. That’s all.

Really.

* * *

**The middle of Shiwasu (師走, "Priests Running"; December), three years before Naruto’s graduation**

Once, he tracks Naruto to his home, and immediately feels sick to his stomach; what he sees is everything he remembers of Konoha's failing orphanage program, and it brings back vivid memories of pain and loneliness and neglect. 

He tells himself (again and again and again) that as his teacher, he absolutely cannot get involved. It would be the end of any semblance of professionalism that Iruka may have, and he’d rather not risk having Naruto taken away into another class, to another teacher who won’t care about why he is so loud, why he keeps misbehaving, or why he is so _small_.

(He fills up Naruto’s fridge weekly after that, in an operation so covert that ANBU would be proud.)

* * *

**The end of Satsuki (皐月, "Early-rice-planting Month"; May), two years before Naruto’s graduation**

The first time Naruto flunks, Iruka is twenty years old and he panics hard. He knows his colleagues, and none of them can handle the sheer energy the boy gives or their own inhibitions towards him. He knows some of them would even be downright cruel, or would simply graduate him unfit and allow him to come to danger out there, in the bloody sadistic real world Naruto knows nothing about. When Iruka shuts his eyes, his mind shows him images of the boy’s wrecked little body, so he gets another tattoo on his arm, because concentrating on patterns and seals is about the only thing keeping him marginally sane at this point.

Then later that summer, as though by the will of the gods, Natsume-sensei announces her pregnancy, and it's decided that as one of the teachers at the end of their four-year terms, Iruka would take over her class for the remaining two years. They also decide to stick Naruto with the new class, because it is composed of mostly his peers, (and no one outside of Iruka wants to teach him), and allow him another shot at graduation at the end of the year.

He flunks again, but this time, Iruka knows he has one more year, and at least he’ll graduate with children his own age. He has to.

(He begins to pray regularly.)

* * *

**The end of Satsuki (皐月, "Early-rice-planting Month"; May), the year Naruto graduates**

On a not completely unrelated note to Naruto's turbulent graduation, Konoha’s medi-nins do not get enough recognition. They really, honestly don’t, and he isn’t saying this because he knows trace amounts of healing jutsu. No, he is saying this because the amount of small fingers he has seen them reattach over the years to wailing children with absolute finesse is astounding, not to mention the job they did on his back. (Naturally, he got scolded for running about after yanking the shuriken out of himself, especially because someone of his training should really know better on both accounts. He doesn’t mention the strange feeling that had enveloped him after the metal left him, cold and hot and heavy underneath his skin.) Iruka is saying this because he thinks it’s pretty damn amazing that he is discharged two days after the incident, walking and all.

Of course, they were unable to operate the orange ball of worry off his hip, so there is that.

“Iruka-sensei”, Naruto grabs his hand as he whines, forcing him to stop, “the medic said you cannot be walking around. Don’t be a dumbass!”

Iruka sighs, and adjusts his grip on Naruto's hand as he locks his door and puts up his wards. They’ve just dropped his stuff off from the hospital and there is absolutely nothing easily edible in his fridge or his cupboards, so at the very least they need to make a stop at the corner store, if not eat at the yakiniku a block away, because he does not feel like cooking. “Naruto, I can take care of myself-”

“No you can’t!”

Iruka shoots the boy a dirty look for a) interrupting, b) _so rude_. The boy stares back with a stubborn pouty squint that is quintessentially Naruto.

“I can, but thank you for worrying about me. That's very sweet of you.”, he says, and the loud little child who is no longer his student ducks his head to hide a smile, “But we need to head out to find something to eat, because I’m absolutely famished! Hey, do you have any idea what we should eat…?”

Naruto grins at him, shouting 'ramen!’ with such enthusiasm (and decibels) that one of his neighbors on the upper floors begins to yell about house rules over the railing of the inner courtyard, and Iruka has to apologise repeatedly as he pulls the boy towards the stairwell as quickly as he can with his injury. When they are finally out of sight, Naruto chirping happily about his favorite and second favorite ramen toppings and still holding tightly onto his hand, a strange sensation comes over him.

He stops.

“Iruka-sensei?”, his little companion says, squinting up at him against the sun.

Iruka blinks around, unsure if he zoned out or not, until his eyes settle on Naruto again. 

“Iridofu. I really want to eat iridofu. Is that okay?”

This is actually an understatement. He feels like he’ll die if he doesn’t eat iridofu today; like he needs to cook it to be able to breathe. Like the world will collapse in on itself if he doesn’t do this; like there is no other purpose to life than for him to cook iridofu right now. It’s a rather disconcerting feeling to have, and Naruto seems to sense something of this strange phenomenon, because he looks at him thoughtfully for a moment before sullenly saying, “Eh… but I can’t cook, Iruka-sensei.”

Iruka smiles fondly, squeezing the little hand in his. “That’s okay, I’ll do it! Will you help me bring the groceries home?”

Please, he adds in his thoughts.

“Fine…”, Naruto whines, as though this is a huge chore and as though he is not actually smiling at the thought of a home-cooked meal. As though he hasn't noticed something isn't quite right.

* * *

Iruka chews on his bottom lip as he watches Naruto sleep in his parents’ old futon, comically small. It’s been four days since the Mizuki incident, two since he has been discharged from the hospital, and the boy has not left his side since, fussing over him every time he tries to stand or walk. It's really sweet, if a little annoying, seeing as Iruka is a battle-hardened shinobi who was deployed in war and experienced shit you would not believe, _thank you_. Anyway, they are obviously no longer teacher and student. They are…

He scratches his facial scar as he heads into his kitchen slowly, quietly.

The events with Mizuki have at least made it clear to him that despite years of desperate professionalism, he has come to really care for Naruto. Maybe because he is the last true war orphan in Konoha, with no family to call his own, only the stupid system there to furnish and feed him. Just like Iruka was. And Iruka knows the orphanage system; it never worked well, and he can only imagine how well it worked for Naruto. His other students couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he and Naruto know as a reality: the endless stream of second hand things, the subpar food supply and the school lunches, the broken heating and the badly insulating windows; the dreams of a family, of buying something new, of being whole and home. Not even Sasuke, who inherited not only vast wealth but a personal accountant to see to his worldly needs. (He knows for a fact that the boy lives in a better apartment with better things than he does.)

He unscrews his coffee maker, fills the bottom with water.

What exactly are they then with Naruto? What can Iruka even be? What can he give to him that he needs?

He begins to pack the coffee into the filter, pushing it down with every spoonful. 

Clothes are always good. Food… well, he’s been doing that for a very long time, honestly, but maybe he could squeeze in a bit more. He could take him to the weapons shop too - they were set to meet their new jōnin sensei a couple of weeks later, and he should be well prepared…

He screws the coffee maker together tightly, and sets it on the stove.

Cooking was also nice. Not that Iruka is anything but a moderate cook, but listening to the boy ramble on while chopping vegetables, boiling tofu or scrambling the eggs was a wholesome experience, and Naruto's face at a home cooked meal, made for him specifically, was utterly priceless. It was a good idea to make iridofu. He should cook for them more often.

Iruka turns the rice-cooker on, heating up yesterday's rice. He fishes some umeboshi out of the fridge, and a couple of eggs to make into a tamagoyaki - and some miso soup to reheat in the microwave.

“Iruka-sensei, what are you doing bending?”

He turns around to find Naruto rubbing his eyes, looking quite put upon to find his former sensei misbehaving.

“Breakfast.”

“What?! You're cooking again...?!”

He could get used to Naruto being underfoot all the time. He could.

* * *

He sends Naruto out for groceries on the sixth day, having made his decision. While the boy is away, he empties the single cabinet in his bedroom, moving the few clothes he has into the large built-in closet in the living room. He does the same with the small nightstand, and strips the bed.

He bought Naruto a new set of duvet and pillow covers for his birthday last month. It has ninja frogs on it, so it's fantastically cute, but is also of a great durable quality, and it's easy to wash. He puts them to use on his old bed.

Iruka is just closing the door to the bedroom behind himself when the keys rattle in his lock. Naruto grumbles with his two huge bags of groceries, pushing the door closed behind himself with his bum. He shouts ‘I’m home’, obviously unaware that Iruka is standing right across from him at the end of the hall. They are going to have to work on this awareness thing.

“Welcome home.”, Iruka says with a smirk, watching Naruto jump and almost fall over.

“Iruka-sensei! What are you doing there?”, he shouts back at him, then points an accusing finger suddenly, “Were you bending again?!”

Iruka grins mischievously at the boy, heading towards the forgotten groceries on the floor. “Of course not, is that how you know me? As someone who disobeys rules?”, he says slyly, reaching for one of the bags on the floor.

“You are doing it right now!!!”, Naruto shrieks, gathering up the bags and running into Iruka's tiny-ass kitchen with them as if his life depended on it. Iruka laughs, following him in a more sedate pace.

“Did you get everything on the list?”, he asks. Naruto shoots him a dark look, a sort of 'I’m onto you’ glare.

“Yeah, even though I had to go all the way to the other end of town. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

Iruka grins again. He likes how there is an easy mischief between them now that they aren't teacher and student, that he can let go of the sternness he has to bring to the classroom. Naruto putters around in the kitchen, slamming cupboards as he puts the food away (from his tiptoes on a chair). He looks comfortable here, but Iruka senses a distress beneath - the boy is probably anxious about his getting better and sending him home. Iruka understands this from the depths of his soul, - and no one ever did for him what he is about to do for Naruto.

“Naruto”, he says quietly, “could you come with me please?”

Naruto hops off the chair and walks behind him with a somber expression, probably expecting some kind of rejection. He looks up in surprise when Iruka stops in front of the bedroom.

“I admit, I did send you on long errand, but I had a good reason.”, Iruka says softly, and opens the bedroom door. The boy peeks in, then stares up at him with furrowed brows and a pouting lip, the picture of confusion. Iruka huffs a laugh. “This room is yours now.”

Naruto's eyes widen. 

“You can stay here as much as you like. If you-UPH!”, his monologue is cut short by the boy slamming into him, a ferocious hug around his midriff. Iruka kneels carefully, puts his arms around Naruto, and squeezes him tightly.

“If you want”, he continues softly into the very blond hair, “you can stay here all the time. If you don’t want, then don’t. All I want is for you to know that you will always have a place here.”

Iruka doesn’t mind that his shoulder is becoming wet.

* * *

**The middle of Minazuki (水無月, "Month of Water"; June), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka is quite shocked to learn that the jōnin Sandaime had picked for Team Seven had never passed a team before. Sure, sometimes teams didn't make the cut, either because of teamwork or abilities, but to never pass anyone? Did the man even want this position? 

(... knowing his Hokage… there was a chance he didn't…)

So he is surprised to find out from Naruto - still tied to a stump on the training ground - that they made it. Delighted, he takes the boy out for ramen, and Naruto even beams when Iruka drags him back to the notorious stump after to practice escaping from ropes. (He gets it all down in an hour, so it’s painfully clear to him that if Naruto would have had this type of guidance during his academy days, he never would have flunked even once. He suppress the feeling of guilt that rears its ugly head.)

* * *

Iruka waits patiently on one of the tree branches near Team Seven’s meeting point, favorite murder mystery in hand. He promised Naruto he'd meet him here after their first ever successful D-rank, but he made sure to be concealed enough just in case his presence would disrupt Kakashi-sensei's pedagogy. Lord Buddha knows he hates it when worrywart parents hang about his lessons.

Not that he is Naruto's parent… or guardian… He thinks about the dull ache in his chest for a full minute before arriving at the conclusion that Sandaime would never let him, because Naruto is the vessel after all, and they simply don’t get adopted. Naruto most likely has to be an Uzumaki.

So Iruka is not really here in a pseudo-parental capacity at all. Except that he is, actually. Oh, his professionalism is in tatters, he knows. He just… he just hopes the jōnin will prove to be a better teacher to Naruto than he was, especially when it comes to things like... stealth. And staying alive. And not getting betrayed by comrades. Because Iruka is really bad at that last one.

“So that was our first mission? Man, I thought we would get to do something a little more awesome than help old man Takashi fish!”

(Iruka cringes. That was some ANBU level mission right there, stealth, with the way Naruto’s default volume was set at loud.)

He closes his book to observe Team Seven approaching from the woods. Naruto is, as expected, complaining loudly with his arms crossed behind his head, Sakura is yelling at him angrily, and Sasuke looks bored. Kakashi-sensei… Kakashi-sensei is an epitome of jōnin-ness, he decides, with his aloof manner and slouched posture, strange hair and questionable choice of reading material. Iruka pegs him for a future hokage from his service record. (Being a sweet-talking mission desk worker had its perks.) The jounin glances at him briefly as they arrive, and he bows his chakra back politely.

“Man, Iruka-sensei is still not here? I hope he is okay…”

Iruka twitches. Will Naruto ever accept his chuunin status? He doubts Naruto even knows what that means. Will he have to beat him at a spar to shut up about the shuriken in his back? Probably. Is it worth the effort? _Not yet._

Once they are dismissed and the other team members are out of visual range, Naruto busies himself playing tic tac toe with the tip of his kunai, crouching with his back to the tree. Iruka drops down behind him silently, intent on getting some revenge for that earlier comment.

“I bought those for you so you’d have nice _sharp_ ones.”, he says, taking pleasure in the huge scream of surprise that follows, catching the knife the boy throws away easily and twirling it around his finger.

“Iruka-sensei, don’t scare me like that!”, Naruto turns to him, hand clutching his chest. Iruka throws the whiner his kunai back.

“Idiot! You're a ninja, you’re supposed to be aware of your surroundings!”, he mock-berates as Naruto tries to step on his game of tic tac toe in the dust, and Iruka lets him. He ruffles the blond hair, enjoying the way the boy tries to swat away his hand while not really. They begin their slow walk back to town, the late summer sun warm on their skin.

“I’m proud of you.”, Iruka says simply after a while, and grins at Naruto as the boy stares at him with those big blue eyes, “Good job on your first mission! What would you-”

It happens again, that weird chill running down his spine, ice cold and he feels almost outside his own body. He realizes Naruto is shaking his hand with a worried look on his face.

“Hey, Iruka-sensei. What's going on?”

“I… I need to make donburi.”, Iruka whispers, a little frightened at this returning sensation of a consuming need to cook, but Naruto just smiles at him kindly after a moment of scrutinizing Iruka’s face.

“Okay.”, he declares as he pulls him along the road, “That sounds pretty great! I’ll tell you all about my first mission while we shop, okay Iruka-sensei?”

Naruto is so brave, Iruka thinks, and holds the little hand tighter.

* * *

**The end of Minazuki (水無月, "Month of Water"; June), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka is walking home with that huge, no-good folder under his arm when he runs into Team Seven. Naruto tackles his side so forcefully he almost drops the paperwork of doom, but he can’t stay mad at the orange phenomenon of glee that jumps up and down, tugging on his hand with shouts of ‘food, food, food!’.

“Ah, you must be the famous Iruka-sensei.”, Kakashi-sensei says, and Iruka can’t help a small blush. He’s never been on this side of the parent-teacher meeting before.

“Infamous, maybe.”, he replies as he shakes the jōnin’s extended hand, managing to disentangle himself for a moment. Naruto scrunches his face up at them.

“You don’t know each other?”, he says slowly, and Sasuke scoffs next to him. “But you know everyone, Iruka-sensei.”

“Idiot”, Sakura cuts in with a punch to his arm, “Konoha is huge. How could he?”

Naruto throws his arms into the air, volume doubled as they descend into a squabble, and Iruka shares a look with Kakashi-sensei; they need no words to feel their camaraderie. Silently, they turn on their heels and begin walking down the street. The kids will eventually notice.

“Thank you for taking such good care of them.”, he says to the other man with a tilt of his head. “I know they are a handful.”

Kakashi-sensei chuckles darkly, his hands slipping into his pockets.

“I can’t imagine how you teach an entire class. Were any of us ever so inattentive...”, the jōnin mumbles, that one dark eye examining the folder under Iruka’s arm with faked causality before moving on to the other parts of the street; rooftops, corners, trees, Iruka notices, a lookout for anything at all. 

“Well, being deployed straight into war had that effect on us.”, he replies softly, glancing behind himself to see the three children running after them, “I’m glad that’s not how they start their careers. They’ll pull through later, once they get their first serious assignment. They have the will of fire.”

Kakashi-sensei’s eye is back on him, and there is something warm in his gaze; Iruka has no time to decipher its meaning, as Naruto crashes into him again, this time hopping onto his back for an illegal piggy-back ride. He hisses in pain as it justles something that should probably not have been justled, and Naruto is off him in an instant, looking tearful and afraid. They both stop to look at him, as do Sakura and Sasuke behind him.

“I’m so sorry! I forgot what the nurse said!”, Naruto shouts almost hysterically, clutching his face, but what worries Iruka more is his genuine concern behind it, “Oh no, please Iruka-sensei, I don’t want you to not be able to walk again, we need to get you to the hospital-”

“What.”, he realizes his tone is flat, flat like it used to be, but he does not like where that morsel of information is leading, and disregards the strange looks the children give him. Kakashi-sensei takes one step closer to him. “Which nurse told you what now?”

Is this where this has been coming from? Did someone seriously try to play a trick on an orphan child when he was by the bedside of someone he cared about? Did someone think making Naruto needlessly worry was funny? His rage is ice in his veins.

“The-the blond one with the glasses. She-she said if I’m not careful you’ll break your back and won’t be able to walk or teach or be a ninja at all, and I-”

Surprisingly, it's Sakura who puts a calming hand on Naruto’s shoulder. “I-It’s okay Naruto. Iruka-sensei is fine, see…”

Well, he isn’t. He is barely keeping his murderous intent in check, and is a hair’s width away from hunting down this nurse and killing her with his bare hands; Kakashi-sensei has probably picked up on it anyway, because he turns to Naruto and simply says, “She lied to you.”

Iruka is gone by the time Naruto shouts ‘what’ and ‘why’, leaving the jōnin to deal with his mess. He’ll apologise later, when _he cut that bitch_.

* * *

Kakashi blinks slowly at Genma from his seat next to Asuma and Kurenai as the man rambles on about the latest juicy gossip in their booth at the Blind Bear, an establishment strictly for adults. (Buddhas know he needs a little time with no children, especially after having dealt with the consequences of someone telling cruel lies about Iruka-sensei to Naruto. Frowning, he drinks some more beer.)

“So, okay, I’ve got another great story.”, Genma begins. Anko snorts loudly next to him, grabbing a handful of peanuts away from Gai, who’s sitting at the end of the table on a poor rickety chair, but that’s what you get for being late to the usual Thursday night drinking session. (Kakashi is always early, because he absolutely will not sit with his back _not_ against the wall and with _no_ view of the exit.) “You’ve heard of Umino Iruka of the Academy, right?”

Oh great. He did murder someone.

“See, at the end of graduation, the jinchuuriki steals a forbidden scroll from the Hokage, right? Except, as it turns out, he got tricked by one of the teachers. Mijuku or something.”, Anko tries to interject that the correct name is Mizuki, but Genma just shakes his hand that it really doesn’t matter, and soldiers on, “So our fellow Iruka finds the kid in the woods before anyone else, takes a fuckin’ fūma shuriken in the back that almost severs his spine, and _still_ leads the traitor on a merry goose chase until the ANBU get there.”

(It’s not Genma’s fault he doesn’t know about Naruto’s surprising victory, as the Hokage immediately classified it; Kakashi is only privy to it on account of being the boy’s teacher.)

“Okay, what’s the point Genma?”, Asuma says between drags, “This is old stuff.”

Kurenai lifts her arm to order another round from the retired shinobi behind the bar, as well as something else to eat. Kakashi isn’t sure that eating at the dinghy Blind Bear is a good choice for their health, as he is certain the place would never pass a health inspection without a copious amount of money placed in an envelope and slid across the table quietly. But the beer is cheap, and the owner doesn’t mind Gai’s loud bursts, so it’s where they always come.

“Yes, but I had to make sure all parties present are up to date.”, Genma says as he shoots Gai a pointed look, who is notorious for never knowing anything yet always possessing some new form of juicy gossip, as though to spite Genma, “The real good part starts today, when my man Raido here got a gloriously stupid head injury and we were waiting at the hospital.”

Across Kakashi, Raido sighs, adjusting the bandages covering his face and looking somewhat embarrassed. “You promised not to talk about that.”

“I’m not. I’m talking about fucking Umino Iruka strolling in there with killing intent dialed so high, even chūnin were pissing themselves. It was great people, I thought it was going to be a massacre, but no, he goes up to the head nurse, and starts demanding loud enough for every shinobi on the whole floor to hear that”, their beers arrive, and the narrative is broken by huge gulps, “Yeah, to make an official complaint or some shit against this nurse who was needlessly frightening and misleading a student or some shit. Fuck knows, that’s not the interesting part. See, it turns out this bitch was on thin ice anyway, on account of being a freakin’ Suna spy people.”

“Eh? And how do you know that?”, Anko says around her mouthful of peanuts. Kakashi wishes she would stop talking like that.

“I asked some people who know some people, Anko. So, like, ANBU has been circling her for weeks! That’s the point, okay? And get this, when my man Iruka comes in ready to murder someone, she flips, and tries to off him right there in the middle of ER. I mean, it was a quiet day, but it was still full of shinobi. Totally crazy. So she tries to senbon him, but he not only elbows her in the face, but takes the senbon, shoves it most beautifully in her upper arm point, so she has no function of the right arm. And! And before I even get up from my pretty little tush, he lightwrote her, people.”

The table erupts into cries of denial and disbelief, glasses clinking and beer spilling, and Kakashi tries to picture the kindly smiling Iruka-sensei as he draws a minimal part of the seal directly with his fingers onto the Suna spy, pushing not only his chakra, but the rest of the seal out as well - as far as he remembers, it’s sort of like what happens with summoning, except not one part of it is pre-scripted or pushed through by the summons, and that high level of intent and concentration along with the close combat factor makes it mostly unusable in battle today. But it is an old-school high-level seal technique... the last person he knows of that could do it was Kushina-san, actually.

(But he knows now why Sandaime kept Naruto under Iruka-sensei’s watchful eye.)

“You forgot to mention how the ANBU had to make Iruka-sensei put his katana away.”, Raido quips in. “He was really about to cut her head off.”

“You’re lying!”, Kurenai says in disbelief, “I’ve met Iruka-sensei. He’s sweet.”

Anko snorts, but Kakashi can’t help but think that he does seem like a genuinely kind man, even if it is a bit at odds with being a shinobi; but he supposes it’s a prerequisite for teaching small children well.

“Yeah, well, I think they took him for a cooler in T&I after that.”, Genma laughs, and they move on to other topics.

* * *

It’s two, possibly three hours after Iruka had left Naruto on the verge of tears with his cell when he finally gets out of T&I. Normally, they'd put someone like him in an all-nighter, but Iruka knows everyone and they know him, so he gets out after having a brief heart to heart with Ibiki about disregarding ANBU instructions when they are trying to apprehend a spy, and the stupidity thereof. All Iruka can think about during all this is the hurt in Naruto’s eyes.

He shouldn't have left him there.

That was a dreadful mistake, a horrible mistake. That Suna spy wasn't worth it, not by a long shot, but he was so furious… Iruka clenches his teeth as he runs as fast as he can to the boy’s shoddy apartment complex within the limits of allowed speed. It was selfish, that’s what it was. That violence hadn’t made things better, it just made _Iruka_ feel better while Naruto was left all alone again with the betrayal and the hurt - he has no doubts that he’d put on a brave face in front of his new cell, flashing that toothy grin he’s gotten down to perfection that doesn’t reach his eyes at all. 

He’s absolutely disgusted with himself.

When he arrives, he opens the window with practiced ease, barely making a sound as he slips in out of habit; Naruto is curled in on himself on the bed, unaware and facing the wall.

What an idiot he is. What an irresponsible, childish thing to have done that.

“Hey.”, he says gently, taking the few steps between them and sitting down on the edge of the bed. The boy turns his head in surprise, pain so evident on his small face it makes Iruka want to burn the world. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you there.”

Naruto blinks at him, turning wholly around. His bed creaks, and his sheets look like they haven't been washed in a long while; now that he has graduated, the system treats him like an adult, and there is no more caretaker coming by every week. (It’s a moronic system, Naruto is still twelve, but Iruka has learned on his own skin that the system doesn’t care. The expectation is always that orphans get adopted out before graduation.)

“I was so angry.”, he hesitates, unsure if his touch would be welcome, before placing a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, “I wanted to hurt the person who said that to you so much that I left when I shouldn't have. I'm sorry Naruto.”

Naruto sniffs loudly, nose obviously stuffy, and sits up, scrubbing at his eyes. “I don’t want it.”, his voice is small and cracking, “I hate the fox. They hate me so much because I’m the fox. I don’t - I don’t wanna -”, he begins to cry again, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks; this time, Iruka doesn’t hesitate, puts his arms around him and pulls him close, feels little fingers clutch at the back of his vest with all the force they have, smooths down unruly blonde hair over and over again as sobs wreck the small body.

It’s just not fair, that a little boy would have to suffer this much for a peace that barely exists.

“Come on.”, Iruka whispers after a while, not letting go until Naruto raises his head, eyes red and puffy, “Let’s go home and eat something delicious.”

And that’s what they do; Iruka stuffs the boy with the leftover mapo tofu he has before bringing out the big guns (high quality chocolate bars), watching stupid late night competitions and making shadow figures on the wall from under the cover of his futon (table put aside), until Naruto smiles again, until he laughs again, until he falls asleep, snuggled into his side, so small and precious.

Iruka wants to kill everyone who has ever hurt him. (Starting with the Yondaime.)

* * *

**The beginning of Fumizuki (文月, "Month of Books"; July), the year Naruto graduates**

Kakashi ambles along behind his little team, tuning out their usual bickering - this time over who was supposed to pick which row of carrots - almost pulling out his book in boredom when his eye lands on one Umino Iruka turning onto their street, again with that huge dossier under his arm. Naruto notices him at the same time he does, like some sort of fine-tuned radar set to his favorite person, running forward with loud cries of 'Iruka-sensei’, tackling the man with an enthusiastic hug. Iruka-sensei laughs, ruffling the blond hair, and Kakashi can very well imagine him fucking up that nurse in the hospital for hurting his sensei's son. It's pretty sweet.

“It’s so nice to see you all again!”, Iruka-sensei says to them, “Are you coming back from a mission?”

Sakura and Sasuke also seem fond of him, though not in the way Naruto is. They discuss their harvesting thrill-ride of a mission, - he is tuning out again -, before Naruto interjects that he is hungry and that they all should have dinner now, together.

Iruka-sensei opens his mouth to reply and freezes. 

It makes Kakashi switch into field-mode immediately, but nothing happens: the man just stands there, eyes glazed over, lips slightly parted. Like a computer that's shut down.

“I-Iruka-sensei…?”, Sakura stammers, but Naruto shakes his head at her, and his reaction surprises Kakashi even more.

“It's okay.”, the blond says, “It’s been happening ever since he had the shuriken in the back. He just really wants to cook something after.”

Kakashi narrows his eye. That… is far from okay, if probably harmless. Iruka-sensei is still standing there, staring off into the distance.

“How long does it take?”, Sasuke asks, and Naruto shrugs, taking the sensei's hand into his. 

He has a good eye for seeing connections and noticing details, he knows, but over the course of his career, Kakashi has learned to trust his gut over almost anything. And right now, his gut is telling him that he should investigate. He frowns, leaning forward to his genin, “New mission. We accompany Iruka-sensei tonight.”

“You just want free food.”, Naruto says with a pout, just as Iruka-sensei comes out of it with a small shudder. The boy looks up at him with a grin. “What are we having?”

“... su-sukiyaki.”, Iruka-sensei whispers with a small blush, avoiding Kakashi's gaze.

“Eh, never had that before!”, Naruto laughs, and his genin begin to loudly discuss the merits and variations of sukiyaki as they begin their journey towards the market, no doubt to lift the unease apparent on Iruka-sensei's face. They are cute little gremlins like that, and they naturally drift forward, leaving him to follow with the chūnin by his side. He tries to smile reassuringly, but he is neither very good at it nor is the other man looking at him, so his efforts are ultimately a failure. 

“I apologize for leaving so suddenly last time. My temper got the better of me.”, Iruka-sensei says after a while, and Kakashi can’t help a chuckle.

“Oh, I’ve heard.”, the other man’s head whips around so quickly, his ponytail smashes into his face, “Genma was there in the ER. I don't know if you know him, but he is the biggest gossip Konoha has ever known.”

He surmises from the quiet groan that Iruka-sensei knows exactly what kind of man Shiranui Genma is, and just how fast and in how many circles the retelling of the events have probably occurred.

“He was wildly impressed with you!”, Kakashi tries to reassure him, but all he gets is a flat disbelieving look as they enter the market.

It’s a cooling evening by the time they arrive at Iruka-sensei’s apartment, a couple of blocks from the Academy where the civilian and the shinobi residences intermingle. It’s not a bad neighborhood, like Naruto’s apartment, but it’s not very great either, like Sasuke’s - or Kakashi’s, though he chose his living accommodations to suit his very particular set of needs that had little to do with the class of the neighborhood. (The realtor thought he was an avid feng shui follower, but nothing could be further from the truth.) There are still many people outside, and Iruka-sensei waves to a remarkable number of them. They climb the stairs - the inner courtyard around which the homes are arranged halved into a tiny training ground and a more domestic area, with a carpet beater and a clothes dryer -, and the other man undoes a sufficient number of wards for Kakashi’s liking before unlocking the three separate locks on the door. Truly, a man after his own heart.

Inside, there is barely a genkan for them to take their shoes off (it looks impossibly cluttered with all their sandals - Iruka-sensei yells at Naruto for not putting his down properly), which continues on into a small corridor with doors to the bathroom on the left. It smells clean - he can detect a faint citrusy smell of some cleaning product. His nose appreciates the smell, along with the faint hint of incense. As soon as his shoes are off, Naruto runs forward, throwing open the door at the end of the hall: he can see a bed with shuriken patterned covers, and a mess that’s very Naruto-ish.

“This is mine!”, the boy beams proudly, like the bedroom is his greatest treasure and he wants all the world to know, “Iruka-sensei lets me stay whenever I want! Look, look, I even have some awesome scrolls on ninjutsu! And a very cool bean bag.” 

Kakashi hears Iruka-sensei mutter behind him ‘how did he get that back in here again’ under his breath as he reaches the corridor’s end; to his right there is a large room with tatami, and what seems to be a balcony looking out into the garden encircled by the continuous block of the neighbouring complexes. It’s as quiet and private as it gets in this part of the village.

Iruka-sensei turns left, and disappears around the corner to what Kakashi assumes to be the kitchen. He enters the washitsu instead, curious. There is an old tv set tucked into the corner next to the balcony door with a bookshelf that has seen better days housing various books. The titles range from technical to murder mysteries (and can Iruka-sensei’s ratings in Kakashi’s book go any higher, because they are alphabetized), all second hand by the looks of it; interestingly, there are no pictures save for the small ancestral shrine under the balcony window.

A shinobi couple stare back at him happily from the photo. The incense has burned away, but Kakashi can see the small altar is particularly well-cared for, even if it's very simple. He offers a small prayer to them, before letting his gaze wonder further.

Above the altar, plants line the windowsill, small orbs of water hovering over them; a curious little jutsu. The sunshine dances in delightful patterns on the floor as it breaks through them. A bit back, in front of him and in viewing distance of the television set is a worn low table, the only other furniture in the room, with zabuton pillows on the floor - one a newer in blinding orange. There is a single piece of calligraphy that hangs on the wall in an old frame, but he has always been very bad at cursive script and can't really read it. He notices that in the back of the room is an oshiire, probably housing the futons and whatnot.

Very nice, Kakashi thinks, an absolutely stellar apartment that passes all tests. He could even sleep here. 

He heads towards the kitchen, taking a peek at the genin huddled around a scroll or something in what is ostensibly Naruto's room. “Hey, aren't you going to watch Great Mecha Samurai?”

(Sasuke’s embarrassed flush gives him life, it really does.) A moment later the three troublemakers storm into the living room, and he hears the opening theme of the show play. It's good that they can be kids still, unlike they were.

Iruka-sensei is busy preparing the vegetables when he enters the narrow kitchen. He likes the little bar under the window opposite the workstation, allowing for a view of the street below.

“You have a lovely home.”, Kakashi says, and Iruka-sensei blinks at him rapidly in surprise, before deciding that Kakashi really does mean it, and smiles back sincerely.

“Thank you.”, he says quietly, “I’m sorry for ruining your plans this evening.”

Kakashi takes the bowls that are set out.

“Nonsense, I’m the one getting a good meal here… but, I have to ask. Have you consulted a medic, Iruka-sensei?”

The other man’s hand stills, holding the knife for a moment in the air before resuming chopping.

“I’ve always known my brain has faulty wiring.”, he replies almost inaudibly, “And as it poses no danger, there is really nothing to consult about.”

Naruto begins shouting insults at Sasuke, and Kakashi drags himself away from the conversation in order to end the squabble before something is on fire.

A little while later, the sukiyaki is ready: Kakashi is surprised by how much he looks forward to it, his mouth watering at the smell as Iruka-sensei brings the pot into the living room. After a short introduction to Naruto about the merits of dipping the vegetables into the egg, they are all enjoying an absolutely delicious meal. Whatever is making Iruka-sensei cook, it has great ideas.

“So, Sakura, have you started on your medical training yet?”, Iruka-sensei asks conversationally between bites, but seeing the girl look at him, then at Kakashi in confusion adds hurriedly, “Oh, sorry. I just thought since you have the best chakra control, you’d be the designated healer.”

“Designated healer?”, Naruto says with his mouth full. Kakashi will never know if he actually listened to anything Iruka-sensei ever thought him in school, but the answer is probably not. Sasuke sighs dramatically.

“Dumbass.”, the Uchiha grumbles, “every cell is required to have someone with at least some medical knowledge. In case someone gets hurt.”

Sakura blushes sweetly. “I would like to, I guess…”

“I haven't decided yet who should be the designated healer.”, Kakashi says as he puts his sake cup down, “The kunoichi isn’t always the best choice, if the boys are not of matching range and elemental disposition.”

Iruka-sensei nods as he pours him another round.

“That’s true. It was the case for my genin team too, so I ended up spending my hours in the field hospitals. Not that I was anything but moderate, but it came in handy when I applied for the sewa specialization.”, the other man replies with a chuckle, putting some udon into the sukiyaki pot.

“Eh, the what now Iruka-sensei?”, Naruto says - thankfully between the two bites, instead of in the middle of one.

Iruka-sensei looks like he is reevaluating his vocation for a moment, before putting down his bowl to point at himself in exasperation. “Me. I’m a chūnin with sewa specialization. You know, shinobi who work in the nursery, orphanage, academy and parts of the pediatrics? ...You never listened to me at all, did you?” 

Kakashi tries not to laugh at Naruto's sheepish reply of 'sorry’ and Iruka-sensei’s following exclamations of 'how are you ever going to be a hokage if you don't know who does what’ and 'Sakura please give me back my faith that someone listened to me talking for two years, because I’ve been yelling at this dumbass for six and Tenjin help me I’m losing all faith in my teaching abilities’ (dramatic sob), or Naruto indignantly shooting back 'you shouldn't make everything so hard to understand then’. 

* * *

Having sukiyaki was quite fun in the end. Iruka was slightly apprehensive about what Kakashi-sensei would think, especially given the way the idea came up, but he was nothing but charming. He finds that talking with the jōnin is easy and effortless, and not talking even more so; they seem to be quite similar in their habits and thoughts, and being with Kakashi-sensei is like holding a pebble washed smooth by the river, intricate veins on the surface that catches the eye so you take it home with you.

Interestingly, this 'sukiyaki incident’ starts a habit of weekly dinner parties - without the aid of his new found something suggesting food, thankfully. He invites Team Seven come every Friday, and he always cooks something else. It's… pleasant.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter and left comments or kudos! You are all lovely! <3 
> 
> I started writing this fic more than a year ago on two premises: a) what would have felt to me like a logical conclusion to Naruto instead of what we got (and what if the story was forced to go that way), and b) what if Iruka was for once not the psychologically better adjusted one, as compared to Kakashi? (Also, the person we actually see in the series having friends... is not Iruka. For all we know, his closest adult acquintance was Sandaime.)
> 
> I really hesitated on posting this, because honestly, I wrote this for me, and wasn't sure if anyone else would like it. But then I saw a tag on tumblr, 'i wrote this for me but you are welcome to read it', and despite its humorous circumstance, it gave me courage to go ahead and begin posting it. Unfortunately, because of fan/life balance, I think I'll only be able to manage monthly updates - sorry about that.
> 
> Also, **this chapter talks about past abuse, rape, and torture, with the consequences thereof**. If that is not your cup of tea, please skip from The end of Hazuki (One week, he invites Team Seven...) to the section beginning 'Iruka is so tired after his classes'.

**The middle of Fumizuki (文月, "Month of Books"; July), the year Naruto graduates**

A most mundane truth of their bloodthirsty world is that missions, filled often with gore and death and torture, are only about 50% field work. The rest, well, is administration and accounting. Not the most glorious of tasks for a shinobi, but a hidden village is a business of sorts, and good administration is essential at their size. (In fact, Iruka himself has saved many a paycheck when clients tried to skim or skip on the fees, no doubt thinking that contract killers couldn’t count. They are wrong.) However, that good administration all depends on an up-to-date and correctly indexed database, - and since the current head of admin is ancient and doesn't trust computers, Iruka and the rest of the mission control bureau are stuck with a yearly overhaul: they affectionately call it ‘The Month of Inky Hells’.

Hence, the chaos and suffering around him.

Iruka watches Naruto scribble in his notebook, form 55-C permanently seared into his brain and floating about when he closes his eyes like a bad apparition, relieved to just stare at the boy for a minute or two. He's a little island at Iruka’s low desk among the scattered paperwork he had brought home, blond brows furrowed in adorable concentration. (The kanji look atrocious of course.) He'd always known he liked to draw, because returned worksheets and essays with doodles were a general occurrence, but to see him so immersed in his own little manga was sweet. Almost half of the notebook is already filled with the story he has thought out. 

Naruto sighs in frustration, erasing whatever he has done on the recent panel.

“What is it?”, Iruka smiles, wanting to look and think about anything other than the piles of form 55-B awaiting him that jōnin mess up all the time, “Hard pose?”

“No.”, Naruto mumbles, searching about for his other pencil, lifting some of Iruka's paper mess, “I'm stuck in the story.”

“Can I help?”, he feels a little foolish for asking, because the last time he'd read a manga was when he was... eleven, maybe, but he is so happy that the boy had even come to keep him company today that he has to. (And maybe he doesn't want to work.) Naruto stares at him in surprise.

“It's… it's stupid, Iruka-sensei.”, he scratches his messy hair, gaze dropping back down, “I'll just not draw the mom. I mean, in the show she is always there for Yoshiyoshi, you know, the Great Mecha Samurai? But I don't even know who my mom was, so it's really hard for me to imagine what a mom would do…”, he trails off so softly, it wrenches Iruka's heart.

Wait. 

Wait wait wait, his mind begins to shout, pulling on the brakes sharply and wrestling back control from his bleeding heart. Naruto doesn't know who his mother was?

(Does…does he know who his father was…?)

He had assumed… foolishly, that one of the caretakers would have told him. Oh, oh, he should have known better, known that people barely making an effort to keep the boy alive wouldn't bother with answering questions about parents. This is horrible, this is-

“Iruka-sensei?”, Naruto squints at him in confusion, “You aren't doing the cooking thing again, are you?”

This needs to be remedied right _now_.

“Naruto, please come with-”, he begins, only to cut himself off; he is rushing ahead again, he realizes, doing what would satisfy him again, instead of thinking of what Naruto needs, and that won't do. He won't make the same mistake as last time, no. He shakes his head, scratching his facial scar. “Would you… would you like to know who your mother was, Naruto?”

Those blue eyes stare back in wonder.

“Yes! Yes, please Iruka-sensei!”

That settles it. He leaves the paperwork behind, damned be any deadline he is supposed to meet, and takes the boy to the archives in the Plum building, first floor, to the left. He helps him fill out his forms to request the files on his parents, - manages to convince the clerk to let Naruto's lack of seal slide, he is a new genin see, still being carved (adds getting a seal for Naruto to his mental to do list), - takes the two hefty boxes they are given and marches them over to the reading alcoves. He almost opens the boxes, but stops himself at the last minute - after all, this isn’t his family. Naruto… Naruto isn’t his son, he’s just…. Naruto might not want him here at all.

His hand hovers about lamely before he squares his shoulders, turning towards the door.

“I'm a little scared.” Naruto’s voice is almost panicked, piping up suddenly as Iruka steps away; he looks comically small at the large table, behind the two gigantic boxes they've received, glancing in apprehension at the task ahead.

Oh. He turns back.

“That's okay.”, Iruka smiles as he pulls up a chair and slides the heftier box of Yondaime's unclassified documents to the side. He hates the man anyway. “Let's just take a peek at your mom. We can come back anytime, as many times as you'd like.”

Naruto lifts the top of the box with some trepidation, taking out the first batch of papers - the datasheet. He mouths, 'Uzumaki’, face falling when he can't make heads or tails of the kanji following. Iruka points to the row below, where it's spelled out phonetically, and tries not to be too emotional as Naruto reads out loud, for the first time in his life, his mother's name.

“Kushina.”, he whispers with wonder, “Her name was Kushina, Iruka-sensei! That's such a pretty name. Oh, are there pictures in here? I bet she was beautiful!”

“There should be an official headshot in there somewhere. You know, like the one you had taken after graduation.”, he gestures for him to flip the page, and winces at the vehemence that almost tears the pages apart.

“Here it is! Oh, she is so cute! And she has red hair, that is so cool!”, Naruto bounces about in his chair, flipping the document back and forth as though trying to memorize both the photo and the kanji at the same time. “What does this say, Iruka-sensei?”

“Jōnin rank, special qualifications.”, that latter part should probably be discussed at a later time. Maybe by someone more appropriate and qualified then him, like Sandaime.

(Why hadn't Sandaime told him who his parents were? Just… why?)

“So cool!”, Naruto yells, ignoring Iruka's shush and looking at the photo again, “Mom, you kicked a lot of butt, right? I bet you were super strong, like Yoshiyoshi's mom.”

“Here, you can see how many missions she's completed. There should be a summary of her abilities on page three... Yes, see? She was very skilled with seals, and excellent in ninjutsu, so you bet she kicked a lot of butt.”

Naruto laughs in delight, staring at the picture of his mother in complete adoration, and Iruka can't help but smile at him. He wishes he could show Naruto more, tell Naruto more, but he never knew either of his parents; wonders if he could track down someone that could tell a little tale about Kushina at least. Yes, Naruto would absolutely enjoy that, and maybe if that someone is uncooperative, he can ask Ibiki to do a little intimidation for him - the man still owes Iruka a favor from last time, after all. He's so lost in his list of potential narrators and possible bribes and bones to break, that he is unprepared for the sudden ferocious hug, a blond head smushing itself into his vest. He stares down quizzically, smiling back at the ear to ear grin.

Maybe he did well today.

He pats the soft hair again as the little arms let go, watching Naruto practically vibrate in his chair while scrambling to kneel on it instead so he has a better view of the table. “What about the next page? Is that a summary of her jutsus?”, he jabbers like Iruka had given him a superb present and he can't contain his absolute joy in his tiny body.

“No, that's family status. The wider ability summary should be in the -”, but Naruto has already turned the page, little finger running along the names he can't make out, grandparents, parents, until it comes to a halt at husband.

After all, every Academy student knows how to read that name.

“What?”, he breathes, jumping back to the beginning and reading again in silent confusion. The blue eyes look at him, like this is a prank, suddenly very still and not at all grinning.

Shit.

“I… I always thought you knew. I thought when you were painting the Hokage monument…”

“That I was mad at my dad…”, Naruto mumbles, his attention shifting to the box Iruka had pushed away earlier. His voice is very quiet now, vulnerable and confused, and it makes him want to rage against the past, “But… if I'm his son…why... why did he do that to me, Iruka-sensei?”

He wishes he knew. He could never understand, not for the life of him, but people often make incomprehensible decisions when on death's door. Slowly, he puts an arm around the little shoulders, relieved when he leans into his touch instead of pulling away. “I don't get it either, to be honest.”, he whispers back. Pauses, before asking, “Want to get out of here?”

The silence that follows is tense, and he watches Naruto trace Kushina's photograph with an ink-smudged finger for a long while. “No, I want to read more about my mom.”, he leans against him, a little awkward but honest, “Will you help me just a bit more?”

“Of course I will.”, Iruka says, pulling Kushina's box closer to them. They stay until the office closes.

* * *

**The end of Hazuki (葉月, "Month of Leaves"; August), the year Naruto graduates**

One week, he invites Team Seven again for dinner on a Tuesday, mostly because Naruto suggests it, bouncing in place from ill-concealed excitement, and he can’t refuse. (Kakashi-sensei gives him an amused look at being such a sap, but doesn’t say anything. Iruka thinks it’s the prospect of free food; as it is, his makeshift recipe book has a section titled 'favored by the shameless freeloader’ in it.)

He broils some fish, makes some rice, nothing too fancy; his young guests don’t seem to mind though, recounting and complaining about their last string of training exercises. Next to him, Kakashi-sensei eats silently and quickly, but not without comment in the form of looks he shoots at Iruka during the grand narrative of their latest adventures. Iruka has a splendid time, and he pours the other man and himself some sake, giving the genins store-bought dango as dessert. Even Sasuke seems to be mildly enjoying himself.

“Is there any more dango, Iruka-sensei?”, Naruto asks with a sly grin, and Iruka sighs dramatically, mumbling 'fiiine’ as he gets up with a show. They both know he could never refuse Naruto's requests for food, and he swears it's going to be his undoing. He might as well refill the sake while he is at it.

When he comes back, scant a minute later, the children are all curiously peeking at something in Naruto’s hand; a photograph. Kakashi-sensei is reaching over with a frown - as far as Iruka can tell with the quarter of a face showing -, and he plucks it from their hand.

“That’s rude, dunce. Don’t go rifling through other people's stuff.”, he says, or at least that’s what Iruka seems to hear somewhere. 

It's his genin team picture. _That_ man stares at him from it.

* * *

Kakashi never could have imagined being a jōnin sensei was so boring and fun at the same time. Sure, D ranks were never exciting, but seeing his genin fall on their faces, get chased around by geese, or be covered in algae was _hilarious_. (Especially when it happened to Sasuke, because that was also somewhat like laughing at his own former self.)

They are heading to the mission desk after completing the latest thrilling saga of weeding someone's disaster of a backyard when they run into Iruka-sensei. Naruto launches himself at the man with an energy he didn't seem to have two seconds ago, and the chūnin laughs at him happily, apparently not minding the dirt that comes with the orange ball of joy.

“Iruka-sensei! You know, we should all have dinner again like last time… that was fun… “, by the sage, how is his sensei’s son vibrating? Not that the other kids seem any less hopeful... Iruka-sensei sighs as though he is very put upon, but the corner of his mouth is turning up, and Kakashi can’t help but smile at him for being so typically kind.

He doesn't quite know how to put it… but where others usually grate on his nerves or bore him to tears - even Gai, bless his spandex-covered heart -, Iruka-sensei is a balm to soothe a deep ache, pleasant and comfortable; he always seems to understand what Kakashi wants to say without him having to say it, and his laughter and humor never fail to bring a smile to his face. 

(Anyway, free fare is never a bad thing, even if he will stop to buy some sake.) 

“Fine.”, the other man says, shushing Naruto’s huge hoorays, “I’ll go get some groceries while you finish up in the mission room. We’ll meet up at home, okay?” 

Like all those times before, the evening passes by pleasantly - Iruka-sensei probably doesn't know, but salt-broiled saury is one of his favorites -, and he enjoys sipping some sake and discussing sealing techniques with the chūnin, who has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, as the kids devour their dango watching something on the old tv. He lets himself enjoy the moment, savors and treasures it.

“Is there any more dango, Iruka-sensei?”, Naruto turns around as the credits roll, and there is something in his eyes that makes Kakashi instantly wary. 

For all his experience with children, Iruka-sensei doesn't seem to notice, taking the almost empty sake flask with him for a much appreciated refill. As soon as he is gone, Naruto pulls something from his pocket to show to Sakura and Sasuke. He whispers conspiratorially, “Look what I found! I almost forgot to show you!”

Kakashi blinks once in annoyance - has his team forgotten he was sitting _right here_ \- before reaching over to pluck the photograph out of the boy’s hand.

“That’s rude, dunce. Don’t go rifling through other people's stuff.”, he spares a glance at the image: Unabara Shachi stands with arms crossed behind three serious children in full genin tactical gear, one of them obviously a small Umino Iruka.

Shit, Kakashi thinks just as Iruka-sensei drops the tray and sake spills everywhere. Shit.

“Iruka-sensei…?”

Iruka-sensei is hyperventilating and shaking, and the thought crosses his mind that he might disassociate hard enough to attack them all, so he scrambles to his feet as quickly as he can while trying to remain non-threatening, and steps in front of his genin.

“What’s g-” Sakura is about to ask, but Kakashi field signs them to stay still and silent; he doesn’t want to call ANBU in, make this official and all. No, he just needs to get Iruka-sensei to stop making fists and be preferably immobilized. He steps closer, softly, shoulders hunched and hands stretched out before quickly sweeping in and wrapping his arms around the other; it’s not the most prudent method, but he doesn’t want to humiliate the man by tackling him to the ground. He isn’t surprised when Iruka-sensei begins to struggle in his arms, flailing wildly and pushing against him, but it’s an incoherent, panicked reaction, no real strength or technique behind it. He doesn't know what else to say or do but hold on as tight as he can and say in a voice as gentle and firm as he can (while getting pummeled); “He is dead, Iruka!”

For once in his life, Kakashi seems to have found the right thing to say, because Iruka-sensei goes absolutely still. 

His breath is still far too quick and his hands are gripping Kakashi’s biceps painfully, but he does turn his head to look at him; it’s like he is trying his hardest to focus instead of his gaze flitting around, so Kakashi repeats ‘he is dead’ again and again to him, watches his breathing slow to a more moderate pace, and finally, after a long minute, sees and feels his head drop to his shoulder, a heavy weight. He barely hears him whisper back, “He is dead.”

By the sage, yes. He glances heavenward, thankful they’ve been given one more day without a killing spree.

Kakashi nods against the auburn head, taking a quick look at his genin. Naruto's eyes seem impossibly wide and tear-filled, and both Sakura and Sasuke have tight grips on his jacket as though to hold him back. Sakura looks confused and scared, like a child should when torn between wanting to help and not knowing how, her gaze flicking between her teammates and him with Iruka-sensei in his arms. Sasuke is the only one not looking at them but at the floor, mouth an unmoving sad frown - he is the only one of the three who knows exactly what this is.

“You’re safe.”, he says to Iruka-sensei, who has almost stopped shaking. 

“He’s dead.”, Iruka-sensei says again so, so quietly, but they can hear him even though the TV is still playing. “He’s dead. I’m here, I’m safe, he can't hurt me.”

Kakashi sighs slightly, relieved, and lets the other man go when he heads with hurried but calm steps to the bathroom; they can hear him heaving. He steps back to his kids, pats Sakura's and Naruto's heads before putting a hand on Sasuke's shoulder.

“It's not your fault.”, he says with as much sincerity as he can, “It’s that man’s.”

He glances at the photograph abandoned on the edge of the table, and pockets it quickly.

“Wh-what does that mean, Kakashi-sensei?”

Naruto's eyes are wide and impossibly blue. The heaving has stopped in the bathroom, and he can hear the sound of running water.

“Iruka-sensei’s jōnin-sensei was…”, Kakashi licks his lips. Mad. An abusive monster. A fanatic follower of Danzō, “... cruel. Torture and rape weren't beneath him.”

That water has been running too long, he thinks.

“Could you clean the table up, please? I’ll be right back.”

Sure enough, he finds Iruka-sensei standing there with his hands under the water and a thousand-yard stare, and he turns the faucet off before he scalds himself. He doesn’t look up, and Kakashi wishes he was better at this.

“Hey…. uhm. What... What do you need?”

“I… a bath…”, Iruka-sensei croaks. He doesn’t move, barely breathes, like he is stuck in his own body, and Kakashi vehemently begins to hate the man who could do this to him. “Then it’ll be okay. I was just… off guard. So stupid.”

“There is nothing stupid about you.”, he says firmly, but he gets no reply, no movement, no acknowledgment. There is only this hollow shell, standing in front of the basin, hands wet on the cold porcelain, so he steps around him to rinse out the bathtub before filling it with appropriately warm water. 

“Can you…”, Iruka-sensei begins, hesitates before trying again, “Can you give me the photo? And… ask them to stay? I…”

“Sure.”, he says, fishing out the slightly damp image from his pocket. The other takes it gingerly, smoothing out the crumpled edges, and a strange part of Kakashi is relieved to see him moving, as though there was ever a chance that he’d become a statue, a monument to human cruelty and evil. 

He heads quietly towards the kitchen, watches Naruto put away dishes atop a stool, Sasuke dry the dishes and Sakura wash up, unnoticed. They are still so foolish, unalarmed and trusting - anyone could have attacked them easily, the way they are unalert. The thought makes him ill, even if he knows it’s always a possibility, that torn bleeding bodies, dead bodies have been in their future ever since they’ve signed up for the Academy. He sighs, watches them jump, and for the first time he doesn’t find it cute.

He scratches his eye under the hitae-itae. “Look… when we were your age… things were different.”

Kakashi has no idea how to continue, doesn't know what is in the academy curriculum about the wars, doesn't know what he should and shouldn't say in order to help Iruka-sensei out. He drums with his fingers once on the kitchen counter while his genin wait silently and earnestly for him to continue.

“We grew up in a war.”, he hesitates; can they even comprehend the meaning of this word, the blood and the pain and the death?, “War is chaos. If you're lucky, well-managed chaos. If you aren't… then you are always at someone else's mercy.”

His eye isn’t focused on them at all now, but on the dimming scenery outside, on the blood-red color of the clouds. How can he as their jōnin instructor tell them of the gross abuse others before him have committed? How can he possibly say, Iruka-sensei's sensei tortured and raped his genin without anyone noticing because it was war? That the only reason he was found out was an accident? How could he say that everything was reformed after that, that jōnin aren't allowed to hand-pick members of their team, that genin are regularly evaluated and checked up on, that jōnin are screened because of what happened to Iruka-sensei? How could he paint to them even a morsel of the gut wrenching sick he felt when he read the report that Unabara Shachi had placed a jutsu on his genin that wouldn't allow them to speak about any of this? It was not the seal they used in Anbu, the one placed on your tongue that wouldn't allow you to form the words. No, his genin could talk, but they would go into cardiac arrest, the rest of their organs slowly shutting down. How can he tell them how utterly enraged he felt, nineteen years old and behind a porcelain mask? 

How can he tell them that Iruka-sensei is a fucking miracle in his eyes?

“As you grow older, you’ll find…”, he begins again, softly, “That… that people have different things that remind them of what they want to forget. You might not understand why it is… but…”

The bathroom door opens, and Kakashi barely hears the sounds of the tatami and the closet as Iruka-sensei returns to the main room for something to wear. He stands between the children and the corridor, not wanting to let them go yet. They haven’t heard a thing anyway.

“I hope you’ll never know war.” Kakashi whispers to them. When he hears the groan of the balcony door opening, he turns to go back to the living room; his genin follow him with steps still too loud, so loud they would have been killed instantly back then. He tries not to think about it.

Iruka-sensei is sitting in front of the open balcony door in a worn pair of uniform blacks, legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, smoking a cigarette. His hair is damp and loose around his shoulders, and the photograph is in his lap. He smiles kindly at the kids behind Kakashi. 

He looks exhausted.

“Come here.”, he says to them, patting the ground next to himself. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

He hears Naruto sniffing, so he turns around and heads back to the kitchen to make some tea. 

* * *

Haltingly, Iruka removes his black uniform, his mesh armor, his underwear, and gets in. He sits, legs pulled up to his chest and arms around his knees, and he stares at the photograph. He feels empty, like someone took time and hung it on a hook, like there is nothing outside of his bathtub in this whole universe. 

Fucker.

He washes his hair with choppy movements, scrubs at his skin until he feels a little cleaner; gets out of the tub and towels himself mostly dry without really paying attention. He puts on his worn yukata, clutching his pack of cigarettes in its pocket, and heads for his closet, sensing and hearing Team Seven still in his kitchen. 

Nothing feels real at all, neither the clothes he puts on nor this thing that is somehow his body. 

He sits down in front of the open balcony door, watches the lights from all the windows instead of the stars as he lights a cigarette, that fucking photo in his lap. Sometimes, he wants to burn it, but he never does. Just tucks it into the hidden compartment in the bed frame; so stupid to have forgotten that. He was just a little bit too happy to have Naruto there... just dumb from caring, says a voice that sounds a lot like his sensei. 

What an idiot Iruka is.

He barely hears Kakashi move, but the kids are noisy, too noisy, one arrow shot and they’d all be dead, one move and he could cut their throats, they’d be slow and loud, they would cry and scream. Iruka tries to tell himself that’s normal, they are what children are supposed to be, more or less, and this is good, good that they are loud, that it’s bad enough that there will be blood in their future because their world is a war machine that churns incessantly, but his heart is not in it. He stares at Shachi-sensei as he takes a drag of his cigarette, before gathering enough energy to look at the three in the doorway.

“Come here.”, he says to them, patting the ground next to himself. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Kakashi turns around and heads back to the kitchen, ignoring Naruto’s loud sniffles and Sakura’s trembling lips. They settle down in front of him, and for once, Iruka is glad for Sasuke’s stoic facade. He cuts Naruto off before he can speak.

“My parents died around the time you were all born. I had no family when I graduated.”, he picks up the photograph, holding it in front of their faces. “This man knew. He knew all three of us had no one to talk to about what he was going to do to us. Back then, jōnin hand-picked their team, and no one questioned it, no one supervised it, no one asked the genin if things were fine.”

He takes another drag to steady himself, still holding the photo up.

“He knew he could get away with it. And he did, for a very, very long time. He… he did many things.”, his hand twitches, and he puts the picture down to turn to them completely, “Listen to me. This world… it’s full of bastards like him. You will meet them, and they will try to use you for their own ends. They will make you believe their actions are your fault. It isn't. Don't give them the satisfaction of following the path they want to set for you. Monsters don't deserve to dictate our lives.”

He stares at them, so small and precious, and almost misses the twitch on Sasuke's face; he doesn't have time to dwell on it though, because Naruto takes his silence to mean the end of his explanation, and launches himself into Iruka's arms with vehemence. Iruka hugs him tightly, listens to the loud cries of apology and watches Sakura's eyes brim with tears.

“Don't worry.”, he says to them, “Life goes on.”

* * *

Naruto stays the night, but so does Kakashi-sensei. (He asks, softly, when Naruto is taking his bath; ‘May I keep you company?’, and Iruka looks at him, at that tired eye, and thinks about how a talent of his caliber was undoubtedly thrown into the depths of the war as soon as they were able, and replies ‘Yes please’ honestly.) He does make Sasuke accompany Sakura home, and hopes Haruno-san will make the boy stay for the night. (She’s incredibly perceptive for a civilian.)

He had hoped the comfort of Naruto’s and Kakashi-sensei’s chakra would lull him to sleep… But as he lies in his parents’ futon (a single, large one, fit for two, because his parents were strangely affectionate people), curled up on his side away from his guest to give him some privacy, he can’t help but mentally compare Shachi-sensei’s abilities to that of the man next to him. He tries to imagine their fight, compares what he knows about Kakashi-sensei's style and data to his memories of Shachi-sensei destroying their enemies, runs calculations and changes settings, trying to see who would win. Would Kakashi-sensei be able to kill him? Or would Shachi-sensei break through, leaving everything and everyone broken and unrepairable, his huge hands reaching for Iruka's throat?

The thought is driving him crazy.

“Kakashi-sensei…”, Iruka breathes, hoping he’s quiet enough not to wake the jōnin if he is sleeping.

“I think we can drop the honorifics after today, don't you?”, the other man murmurs behind him, and Iruka huffs in surprise. He has a point… no one outside of T&I has ever handled him when he was like this, and that is their job. The jōnin could have easily bailed, let him run and freak, alerted ANBU to his hysterics… but he stayed.

He held him.

Iruka blinks against the dark slowly.

“Thank you for what you did today… Kakashi.”, he says softly, the name strange on his tongue like this. A moment passes in silence, before Iruka asks, “May I turn around?”

He hears the other shift, the rustle of cloth, then an affirming hum. Iruka rolls over slowly, carefully, before settling on his other side. Kakashi stares at him with that single grey eye, head turned towards him as he lays on his back.

As there is no good way to ease into the topic, Iruka decides to be blunt.

“How did you know he was dead? Have you fought him?”

A slow blink and an inaudible sigh; he is silent for so long, Iruka is convinced he won't answer.

“I was there when the Hunters took him.”, he says finally, very softly, “I was made aware of his crimes… how it was the accidental discovery of a forbidden technique placed on his genin that led to the unraveling of his sinister actions. I had, however, not known until tonight that you were one of the three.”

Iruka lets out a shaky breath.

“So you saw it… You know he is really dead?”

“Yes.”, is all Kakashi says, and Iruka has to wipe at his eyes against the sudden tears welling up.

“That makes me so happy.”, he whispers, and allows himself some of that hard black anger to spill through when he says, “I hope he was in a lot of pain.”

The tears keep coming, and Iruka draws up his legs to his chest as though his sensei would appear again, make that terrible seal so he couldn't move at all on his stomach, and beat the soles of his feet until he wept. He begins to whisper, even quieter than he was before.

“You know he used to break our arms for the heck of it? If we didn't do well enough… He had so many ways... None of us had parents to talk to…”, he rambles as he is willing himself to stop crying, but the back of his hand is so wet already. “I still feel it… the… how he beat us… He wanted us to be berserkers. Wanted to break us down completely.”

He shouldn't be telling him any of this. Kakashi doesn't want to know this, but Iruka is damned now because he has grown to like the man, their easy conversations and silent companionships, and is ruining everything for the sake of the stupid momentary satisfaction of _telling someone_. He forces himself to get a grip and rubs at his face angrily.

“I know what he tried to do.”, Kakashi says softly, “And I think you are incredibly brave… Iruka.”

“M-Me? Don’t be absurd.”

There is nothing brave about him. The only brave thing he has ever done was trying to protect Naruto from Mizuki in the forest, and even that was too little too late. And he might have escaped Shachi-sensei's clutches through dumb luck, but he never got his sense of equilibrium back, and Tako-chan and Azarashi ended up dead, with only a photo left of them, a photo that makes Iruka ill every time he looks at it. 

Iruka has only one friend, because he is fucking crazy, and no one else but another crazy understands.

“There are so many people who should have been there for Naruto, you know. Like me. But I…”, a pregnant pause, and Iruka’s eyes are drawn back to his covered face, “But you… you are so gentle to him. You took all that pain, and you give compassion and guidance. You care Iruka, and that's incredibly brave.”

His heart rattles in his ribcage, and he looks away, embarrassed. Kakashi is such a kind man.

“The mind is a strange thing.”, Kakashi continues, a soft monologue in the dark night, and Iruka's eyes are stuck on following the rise and fall of his chest, “Sometimes you understand why you make an association; a photograph, a name… a child who looks like his father… and then… there are those you can't prepare for…”

Kakashi lifts his arm, his hand laying across his eyes. They breathe for what feels like an eternity, but is probably only a minute.

“Cigars.”, Iruka whispers to him, almost like a confession, “That stupid drinking song about the plum trees.”

Kakashi lets out a sigh, and his hand falls down to his chest. He turns his head towards Iruka again.

“Chocolate.”, he whispers back, “The sound of a shoji door.”

They smile at each other, (this Iruka knows, even with the mask), small and broken but honest. They fall asleep in the following silence.

* * *

Iruka is so tired after his classes the next day, he decides to head straight home instead of T&I he can do that tomorrow, even if Ibiki will yell at him again. Everything feels off-balance still, and he stares at his home from his genkan. It doesn't even feel like his.

“Shit.”, is all Iruka says to himself and his empty apartment, taking off his sandals. His home doesn't answer, and it feels so lonely.

He decides to scrub himself down as the first order of business, seeing as his new genin have discovered all the muddy places on the academy grounds during pursuit practice. Of fucking course. Once he is clean, he pads into the main room in his old green yukata for a clean pair of uniform blacks. His thoughts are already mostly centered on dinner and that quiz show he likes to watch on TV, so he stops in surprise when he sees the futon still laid out - he absolutely forgot in the morning, in his hurry for class. He’s such a ditz. He notices Kakashi had folded his borrowed uniform neatly, placing it on the pillow he used, his side nice and ordered, in contrast to the other side from where Iruka literally jumped out in surprise when his biological clock reminded him that it was pretty much time to wake up.

Iruka scratches his scar in mild embarrassment. Stupid airhead.

Thankfully he gave Naruto his spare keyring, so he didn’t need to kick his houseguest out. With a small sigh, he continues on to the oshiire, and puts on his usual at home pair of blacks, after which he dissembles the futon bed, letting it air out on the railing of the balcony. He watches Mrs. Doi’s cat run around in the garden a bit, leaning on the railing, before he decides to put in a load of laundry. He forces himself back in from the warm sun, and makes his usual round in Naruto's chaos of a room, then heads back for the uniform Kakashi used.

He lifts it to his nose to smell it automatically, like he usually does with his uniforms, before he realizes what he is doing. 

Oh.

Iruka has always been bad with smells, and he can't really tell what Kakashi smells like other than Kakashi. It's a nice smell though, comforting. He closes his eyes, smells again. Wonders for a split second about how nice it would be to kiss him, before throwing the thought away with the uniform into the basket.

He washes the uniform along with the rest of the clothes.

* * *

Iruka thought that the unfortunate scene last time would bring about the end of the Friday night dinners, yet here is Team Seven again on his doorstep, with a huge basket of fresh strawberries and wide smiles, and Kakashi with some fucking good booze, and the world seems just a little better for a couple of hours.

* * *

**The beginning of Nagatsuki (長月, "The Long Month"; September), the year Naruto graduates**

It's a Monday afternoon when there is a loud knock on Iruka's front door. He stands up from his grading at the table, radio playing quietly, and huffs in surprise when he finds a very dirty Naruto on his doorstep.

“Have you lost the keys?”, he asks with a frown, already thinking about how much a complete lock change is going to cost him, but the boy shakes his head.

“I know you like things clean, Iruka-sensei. So I wasn't sure if I could come in, but… the warm water broke again at my place…”

Iruka watches the boy shuffle nervously for about two seconds before he yanks him in by that very muddy jacket of his.

“Don't be an idiot.”, he says sternly as he closes the door. “I told you you have a place here. That means it's your home.”

Naruto beams at him at the words. It melts his heart a little, although that smile quickly turns to loud complaints when Iruka strips him right there in the doorway, and outright yells when he gets the scrub down of his life. Iruka swears it's like Naruto had had a bath in a mud pit and then rolled around in the rotting leaves, taking a skip through a bog on the way home.

(He doesn't miss Naruto's little smile as he blow dries the blond hair though.)

As compensation for the traumatic experience of bathing like a decent human being, he makes the boy some omurice - he even tries to make the rice into a sleeping bear, with questionable success. Naruto still laughs in delight, scarfing down his hard work in no time, and rolls around watching TV until Iruka is done grading.

He wants to adopt him more than anything.

* * *

**The middle of Nagatsuki (長月, "The Long Month"; September), the year Naruto graduates**

Naruto keeps looking at his sake, sneaking peeks at Kakashi and him intermittently throughout dinner. It's adorable, the way he tries to be covert, but it reaches a point that Iruka has to sigh loudly because honestly, _would he just say it_ and pin the boy down with a well-practiced 'fess up look’. Sakura giggles next to the blond when he flinches at having been caught. He probably wants a sip.

“What is it, Naruto?”, Kakashi drawls next to Iruka, wiggling the flask in the air. Naruto looks at his teammates anxiously, and Iruka wonders if they set him up for something or Naruto is just naturally the one to voice the group’s collective stupidity. He takes a sip of his sake while the boy stews under his glare and Kakashi’s chaff.

“Are you and Kakashi-sensei married now?!”, fuck, Iruka almost chokes on his goddamn drink, “Because they say you have to drink sake at weddings and you guys are always drinking sake when we have dinner.”

Sasuke slaps his forehead with a whispered 'dumbass’. 

“Sasuke says no, but he doesn't know anything about weddings, and Sakura keeps daydreaming instead of answering me.”, Naruto continues, crossing his arms and shooting his teammates glares.

What the sweet ever-loving fuck, Iruka thinks as he wipes his face with his hand in distress. He hears Kakashi begin to wheeze next to him in what is probably a valiant attempt at concealing a fit of laughter, and sees from the corner of his eye him hiding his quarter of face behind his hand. His shoulders shake slightly. Sakura looks perturbed by the idea.

Iruka blinks a couple of times, takes a deep breath, and says simply, “No, we aren't married.”

He can’t fucking believe he had to say that.

“That’s not how it works Naruto.”, Sakura chides him, snapping out of whatever trance she was in at his words, her face a little red, “First of all, it’s one ceremony in a shrine. Secondly, it’s between a man and a woman, not two men.”

Naruto makes a round ‘o’ with his mouth, until his attention is drawn by Kakashi’s undignified snort. “That’s not quite true.”, the jōnin _squeaks_ , and Iruka can see a tear in his visible eye as he tries to get his breathing under control, “For shinobi.”

That’s just great, now they are all blinking in confusion at them, and he belatedly realizes that none of them have shinobi relatives to guide them into the confusing hell of a mess that is the paperwork of interpersonal relations in Konoha. He scratches his scar in alarm, hoping the other man will finish what he started, but he is still struggling for air, so Iruka the chūnin is left picking up the slack. Fucking typical jōnin behavior, really.

“You are going to get an aneurysm or something.”, Iruka says to him dryly, before turning towards the genin, “Shinobi are exempt from the laws of the Land of Fire, and can marry anyone outside of their immediate family. It’s a compensation for the possibility of death on any mission. And… well, there is more purpose to a shinobi marriage than to a civilian.”

Why Team Seven is so enraptured by this topic of paperwork is beyond him. He shrugs in annoyance, but continues. 

“There is a lot about family heirloom weaponry, secret techniques and alliances, but the gist of the matter is that a shinobi marriage is about more than a man and a woman having children. Often it’s only spouses who get notified by the hospital in case of injury, so some marry their best friends just for this benefit. And depending on the circumstances… well, only the spouse may know if an operative dies on a mission, until a public funeral may be held.”

His words hang in the air, and Iruka watches the genin process this reality grimly. He absently wonders if they have their bereavement forms filled out, or if no one told them about Form 4 'Persons to notify of MIA or deceased status of operative’.

Should he put Naruto down on his own? The thought chills him.

“So I should marry Iruka-sensei.”, Naruto declares with a nod suddenly, instantly followed by both Sakura’s and Sasuke’s loud yells of ‘are you an idiot’. Iruka groans quietly at his not-really-adopted son’s twist of logic.

“Oi.”, Kakashi shakes his hand dismissively, glaring at the blond, “I was here first. Go get adopted instead.”

Iruka smacks him, ranks be damned.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos! It always brings a smile to my face, and makes me keep going!
> 
> As you'll probably notice, the story will start to deviate from the manga rather slowly. In fact, during some later conversations, I did try to follow what was said (switching between the official and unofficial ones) in this story.

**The middle of Nagatsuki (長月, "The Long Month"; September), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka keeps trying to tell himself it's ridiculous. He is not Naruto's father, or brother, or guardian, or anything at all, for fuck’s sake. And alright, the brat talked his team into a C-rank (much to Kakashi's apparent disappointment, which Iruka really can't blame him for): he’ll see a little countryside, meet some new people, nothing dangerous. Maybe fend off some rogue bandits, it's the Wave country after all, not exactly flowing with riches.

It's absolutely ridiculous that he is this worried, as though they are heading into a life or death battle or something.

* * *

**The end of Nagatsuki (長月, "The Long Month"; September), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka blinks rapidly at the four figures approaching Konoha's gates. It's them, it's finally them! He could jump for joy, yell ‘fucking shit thank the fucking sage’ at the top of his lungs, but that would be totally unprofessional, so he settles for picking at the bandage on his thigh. They are back, and they are all walking, and their chakra signatures are fine! Fucking shit thank the fucking sage!

These last two weeks were hell for him, to put it mildly.

“Iruka-senseiiiii!”, Naruto begins to scream, running full throttle towards him and jumping in his arms. Iruka laughs, so, so relieved, and lifts the boy up into a hug. Fuck yes. “How did you know we were coming?”

“Oh, just a lucky guess.”, he puts the boy down after a long, tight squeeze, ignoring the looks the guards are giving him because lucky guess their asses, he's been here every morning from sunrise until work and from work until sunset for the past week. (But what Naruto doesn’t know won’t hurt him.)

The rest of the team catches up too. It doesn't escape him that all three children are more somber somehow; he guesses they’d seen or had their first kill, not wildly uncommon with the first C-rank, if a little unexpected. He greets Sakura and Sasuke with big smiles. They return exhausted ones - Sakura especially looks like she is ready to sleep for a couple of days.

When Kakashi too finally steps over the threshold, the guards chorus the customary greeting; the jōnin nods to them in return, before turning to Iruka with what is probably a tired smile under the mask. He still finds it hard to tell.

“Next time I plan to take them on a trip longer than two days”, he says with casual air, “just kill me.”

The kids immediately all yell that the only people with something to complain about are them, and Iruka laughs despite himself. Shit, he missed the noise. He falls into step with Kakashi, Naruto holding on to his hand tightly; Sasuke is on the other side of the man, with Sakura shuffling slowly next to him.

“Welcome back.”, he wants to add, ‘I hope you had a safe mission.’ or something like that, but they were overdue and clearly exhausted, so he is more than sure that things got fucked along the line. (After the first week, Iruka kept sneaking a look at Kakashi’s profile, in hopes the statistics would give him comfort. They didn’t. After the second week, he began to plan how he could sneak off to the Wave country for a possible rescue without effectively becoming a missing nin. Gods, Sandaime had been giving him such _looks_.)

They amble along in silence, which speaks volumes to Naruto's exhaustion, until the street Sakura has to turn off on; they bid her goodnight, and then a couple of blocks later, to Sasuke. Iruka realizes he has no idea where Kakashi lives.

“Hey Iruka-sensei.”, Naruto pipes up, interrupting his theorization of where the jōnin could possibly reside. The old tree near the Inuzuka shrine is a serious contender for the position. “Can we have iridofu for dinner?”

Kakashi sighs almost silently.

“Sure.”, Iruka replies with a pavlovian reflex, a bit surprised at the request. Naruto always chooses ramen whenever he can... He is still mulling this over and not really thinking about what he is saying when he turns to the other man, “Would you like to join us? I’m afraid I have no sake, but maybe some plum wine somewhere…?”

“Thank you.”, Kakashi is probably smiling as he bows his head slightly, “A warm meal would be very nice.”

So they had back to Iruka’s empty apartment - now deep cleaned, but if Kakashi notices, he doesn’t comment. Of course, he has to order Naruto to scrub first, because frankly he smells like a boy who hasn’t had a bath in days while running around all day, which, let’s be honest, is probably what happened, and Iruka will not cook or let the boy step onto his clean tatamis like that. So in he goes, and he doesn’t even complain, which again, shows how exhausted he is. 

Iruka smiles to himself for the first time in two weeks. 

His home suddenly becomes so much warmer, so much more a place to live with (a now clean) Naruto underfoot in his kitchen babbling about their mission, with a jōnin taking a soak in his bathtub, with him cooking; he hasn’t even realized how much he missed this. How it feels like a different place altogether, now that he isn’t alone in it. He used to think alone was okay, but...

“So, suddenly we get attacked by Zabuza.”, Naruto says, sitting on the barstool by his kitchen window and swinging his legs. Iruka puts his knife down from chopping in shock, derailed yet again.

“Zabuza?”, he turns to stare, incredulous. No wonder Kakashi is so exhausted. Goddamnit, he knew it, he fucking knew that something was wrong.

“And his partner, Haku. But he was disguised as a hunter-nin, and we didn’t realize he was working with him until later.”, he mumbles with a frown, “And by then, Kakashi-sensei was so exhausted he needed a week to recover. So we trained! And I can climb a tree with only the chakra in my foot now!”

Iruka ruffles the blond locks affectionately, while Naruto pretends he doesn’t like it. Iruka pretends he isn’t holding back a scream of pure anguish.

(Zabuza! Demon of the Hidden Mist, Zabuza! One of the Seven Swordsmen, Zabuza! Dangerous S-rank criminal Zabuza with dangerous S-rank protege attacking Naruto…!!!)

“But then at the final battle! Man, Zabuza was betrayed by that Gatō guy… And, and Sasuke almost died…”, Naruto’s mouth quivers a bit when he says that, and Iruka feels bad for not inviting the Uchiha boy over, “But it turned out okay in the end. We protected the bridge, and Tazuna-san is safe.”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Yes, it did turn out well, he tells himself, nay, shouts at himself mentally, because they are all home safe and sound. Yes, shitty as it is that they went up against a man like that with no backup, they’ve made it the fuck out. He gives Naruto another hug, with the boy complaining loudly about how he doesn’t want any really and would Iruka-sensei just cook already please.

Iruka wacks him on the head with a wooden spoon for the insolence. Dumbass brat.

(Zabuza?!)

* * *

Later, after Naruto had fallen asleep in front of the TV and Iruka had carried him to bed (and tucked him in), he finds the blood in the bathroom. Well, he finds the dirty field bandage in the bathroom trash, and notices his medical kit is missing some parts. He takes it with him to the living room, making a mental note to disinfect his bathtub tomorrow.

It looks like Kakashi is watching the news, resting his elbow on the table and his head in his hand, but his breathing is slow and his gaze unfocused from the scenes of the report; some fire, somewhere, Iruka doesn’t pay it much attention. He sits down next to him. 

“May I look at the wound?”, he says softly. Wounds, outside the field, are touchy subjects amongst most shinobi, for a myriad of reasons he finds hard to understand - he had always found the notion ridiculous, but the jōnin might not. 

Kakashi looks at him in surprise.

“That's right.”, he forms the words slowly, as though in a dream, lifting his top up with all the swiftness of a snail, “You used to be the medic. It's not that bad, just a little uncomfortable.”

Iruka frowns as he takes the clumsily applied bandage off. For a veteran who has had his fair share of wounds (as evidenced by a scar-littered torso), Kakashi is not very good at dressing them; but then again, he probably always had someone to do that with him before. The cut extends from the left breast to the right waist, deeper at the top where someone had clumsily stitched the skin together, maybe Kakashi himself or a local. It is clean, at the very least, but Iruka cleans it again before beginning to knit the muscles and skin together, starting at the bottom and stopping once at the top halfway to take out the stitches. In the end, Kakashi is left with new pink skin; he leaves most of the maturation to nature.

“Thank you. Marry me?”, Kakashi says sleepily, and Iruka doesn't smack him on account of being injured, but shoots him a glare as he packs the things away and makes the futon. He is pretty sure the jōnin is asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

It only occurs to Iruka as he is brushing his teeth that he hadn't really _asked_ the man if he wanted to stay the night, but they all assumed he did. He hopes he doesn't mind.

* * *

Iruka wakes to the creek of the bedroom door. He expects the patter of feet to head to the toilet, but instead, they come towards the living room; he lifts his head to see Naruto standing hesitantly in the doorway, lit by the moon shining through the window.

“Iruka-sensei…?”, the boy whispers, still a little loud for a ninja, but to be honest Iruka had never deluded himself with the notion that Naruto will turn out to be a silent assassin, “Are you awake?”

“Yes.”, he replies, carefully shuffling towards the middle, certain Kakashi next to him is also awake and feigning sleep. He lifts the cover, because it is autumn now and he doesn’t have that much heating, “Come here, you’ll catch a cold.”

His not-a-student-anymore is still for a minute before quickly running over and laying down on his side. He looks almost afraid - is probably afraid, most likely had a nightmare; it was, after all, his first kill. Iruka knows it’s supposed to be hard and shocking, but only from his literature, because he has long forgotten under Shachi-sensei what it’s like not to kill. He leans on his elbow, letting the boy have his pillow as he throws the cover over him.

“Bad dream?”

Naruto bites his lip. “... re… remember when Mizuki said I’m the fox? What if… if I turn into the fox again…?”, he clutches the corner of the pillow seemingly somewhere on the verge of tears, and Iruka curses Mizuki for eternity in his head again for telling the boy what should really have been a secret. He is too young to know this, to really understand the complicated, almost parasite-like connection between himself and that Thing, much less the political implications thereof.

“You are not the fox, Naruto. That’s not how it works. You’re a human…”, he whispers, petting the blond hair a couple of times, but he doesn't look to be convinced by his words, those sweet blue eyes not meeting his gaze at all. Remembering when he was sixteen, he can't really blame him. “Hey. You know how some scrolls have things sealed in them? They are still just paper, they are not the weapons. That's just like your situation. You are still human, with a weapon sealed inside. Sort of.”

Naruto looks up at him now, pondering this analogy over for half a minute, brows furrowing, until he finally heaves a little sigh of relief, wiping at his eye.

“But I was… it was like I was remembering being the fox… when it attacked Konoha. It was a terrible dream, Iruka-sensei! Like, when I thought Sasuke was dead… I was angry, so very angry, that I wanted to hurt people...”

(What? Shit. Could the seal have cracked or slipped because of the emotional upheaval? Iruka bites his lip, ignoring the alarm bells going off in his head; they can deal with it in the morning, without worrying the boy further.)

“Everyone is angry and distressed and fearful when someone they love is in danger.”, he begins to smooth the blond locks down once more, and Naruto’s eyelids at last seem to grow heavy from the motion, “Sasuke is your teammate, of course you wanted to protect him. That’s normal. I’m sure he wanted to do the same, and Sakura too. You are a cell, one unit, that’s what you do. The rest is just a bad dream you should forget… Everything’s fine, Naruto.”

He waits until the boy's breathing has evened out before taking him back to his bed again, small and soft in his arms, and he tries not to think about the gigantic beast locked within him - a beast that has apparently found a sliver of a crack in his prison. When he returns to the futon, Kakashi is sitting up and waiting for him. 

“You love him like a son.”, Kakashi states when he has sat down, quietly and in a way that books no argument; Iruka ducks his head to hide an embarrassed flush. “Why not adopt him? I'm sure he’d be ecstatic.”

“I… I’d love to. But I think there are politics there I’m not quite privy too; I still don't know why he was given his mother's name instead of his father's, for example.” His guest sighs like someone reminded of something they’d rather forget, and Iruka wonders if he knew Naruto's parents, if Naruto is the boy who reminds him of his father; he thinks it's better for them both if they change the subject. “Do you think the fox is feeding him memories?”

Kakashi clicks his tongue, shaking his head. “I couldn't see because of the mist.”, he murmurs, “But I could feel the evil chakra the fox was lending to him. And… I noticed on the way that his healing is accelerated.”

“That was always the case. He grows teeth back in half an hour.”, Iruka replies absentmindedly, mind rattling with this new information; just how much chakra was the fox giving - and what was it taking? He turns to look at his bookshelf, mentally leafing through his literature before deciding that his next free hours will be spent in the Forbidden Library - when Naruto doesn't know. He jumps slightly when Kakashi calls his name, and turns his attention back to him.

The other man is smiling at him, he thinks… or he hopes. He isn't sure which.

“We’ll figure it out, the two of us. I’ll mention it just in case to Sandaime tomorrow. Let's sleep.”

* * *

As usual for a Saturday, Iruka is awakened by his internal clock at 6:30. He climbs out of bed slowly, groggily, takes a piss and makes some coffee, blinking out into the street as he sips it from one of his two good mugs. He watches the clouds go by. 

He is somewhat surprised that Kakashi keeps sleeping even when he sneaks back to get dressed; Iruka knows he couldn't possibly be silent enough to not stir a jōnin’s senses, but maybe the other is just tired enough to not care about him sliding open the closet door. Once clothed, he shaves and fusses over his hair in the bathroom, telling himself that _this_ time, he will cut it, knowing full well he won't because it reminds him of his father more and more every year. (But he refuses to have a horrible moustache like that. Really, Dad?)

He leaves the third spare keyring on the small cabinet by the door with a note, just in case Kakashi wakes up and wants to leave while Iruka is gone, and heads out to the market. He enjoys the quiet, how there are barely other customers around, and that he has the freshest produce to choose from. He has a nagging feeling Naruto might be sleeping at his place for a couple of more nights, but life has taught Iruka that two unopened packets of everything at the back of his shelf is a must at any given point in time, so the boy isn't that much of a strain on his pantry. On a whim, he buys some daifuku and mizu yokan from the corner shop run by an elderly couple; maybe he can send some to Sasuke and Sakura with Naruto as congratulations for their first officially C-rank / gone to shit / we weren't paid enough for this mission, being an important stepping stone and all. 

He gets back home a little after eight, and is dismayed to find both Naruto and Kakashi still in their beds. Typical, really, have the chūnins do all the real work, Iruka thinks to himself as he puts the food away. He hears Kakashi get up and shuffle to the toilet, and takes the chance to grab his copy of Thousand Strings of Autumn from the bookshelf, the definitive manual to the Uzushio seals he inherited from his parents. He hides it under the big notebook that has become his makeshift recipe book.

“Good morning.”, Kakashi mumbles, standing in the kitchen door with his face scrunched up slightly from keeping his scarred eye shut and blessed with the worst case of bed hair Iruka has ever seen. “May I-”, a yawn, “- trouble you for some coffee?”

“Sure.”, Iruka says, and hums along to his crackly radio as he fills new water and coffee into his small one person coffee maker, putting it on the stove. He decides it's ample time for breakfast, so he goes and bangs on Naruto’s door. “Breakfast in thirty!”

He putters about a bit more, handing the barely awake man in his kitchen his other mug once the brew is finished. (“Marry me.”, Kakashi sighs, and Iruka smacks him on the arm.) He tries steering him gently towards the barstool in hopes he’ll actually not be in Iruka's way, but it's a mixed success, because Kakashi is lanky and also curious, and can't really be handled into a position, much like a cat.

Iruka bangs on the door again. “Fifteen!”

Steam blows out of his rice cooker as he finishes making some tamagoyaki. He hears Kakashi sniff around appreciatively behind him, and it's only then that he realizes that the man’s mask must be pulled down to take the occasional sip. Iruka feels a little touched, and makes sure not to look up from his cooking.

When he bangs again, he hears Naruto yell back something obscene about getting up at the crack of dawn, which he good naturedly ignores. Divine retribution can come later, in the form of a tidied up room and a missing bean bag.

On the whole, breakfast is a quiet affair. After they finish, Naruto lounges about on his stomach reading a favorite manga, and Kakashi sits leafing through that porn of his. (Except, as Iruka discovers when he returns to the kitchen to do the washing up, his Thousand Strings of Autumn is no longer under his notebook, while coincidentally being about the same size as Icha Icha Paradise.) 

They are still there after Iruka has washed up, took the futon out to air on the balcony, put in a load of (mostly Naruto's) laundry, mopped his floors, and refilled the water orbs of his plants. He’s about to start cleaning his bathtub when the doorbell rings.

Sasuke and Sakura stand there, both looking a little better since yesterday, but Sasuke still quite bandaged up. Has he been to see a medic, Iruka wonders. The boy is mature for his age, but he might be too full of bravado.

“Hello, Iruka-sensei.”, Sakura chirps, and he smiles back at her.

“Sakura, Sasuke! Do come in. The lazy ass and his sensei are both here.”, he says loudly, stepping back to let the genin in.

“It’s called taking a break, Iruka-sensei! Not that you know what that means!”

* * *

**The beginning of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

The next Friday, Iruka is standing in his kitchen chopping vegetables for the tempura when Sakura peeks her pink head in and asks, “May I bother you a bit, Iruka-sensei?”

He’s mildly surprised by her approach. It's not that he got along badly with Sakura or any of his female students, but they never really confided in him or made deeper connections, especially those that came from a civilian background, and Sakura was no exception. 

(Iruka had been quite shocked at the first office hours they held with Uchikawa-sensei, and how all civilian mothers, one after the other, were asking things like 'will she be able to find a good husband like this?’, 'what if she gets a scar and no one will marry her?’. He was sixteen, a boy raised in the shinobi world, and their concerns seemed strange and incomprehensible; Uchikawa-sensei had laughed at his anger.

'Marriage is very important for civilian girls, more than anything else.’, she had said, 'And even more so for their mothers. You’ll see, in two months, all of our girls will be fighting over the most popular boy, especially those from non-shinobi families, to put their mothers’ minds at ease.’

And she was right. Iruka tried once not placating the mothers, telling them that all shinobi had scars and their daughters would be respected members of Konoha’s forces; all but two of his kunoichi were suddenly pulled out of school, and Sandaime himself had to persuade the mothers to let them come back. Iruka kept his distance after that, allowing Suzume-sensei to deal with his girls.)

“Sure. What’s on your mind?”, he says, watching her scrutinize his fish-patterned apron from the corner of his eye. He puts his knife away, turning the heat up under the oil.

“I…”, she begins, then seems to think better of it, “You said before that you studied some medical jutsu. Would you please teach me some, Iruka-sensei?”

Ah.

“I don’t know why, but Kakashi-sensei doesn’t seem to want me to learn any…”, she continues quietly, glancing once in the direction of his main room, where the others are. Iruka doubts this is actually true, but doesn’t say anything as he is whisking the batter together. “But I… I don’t want to…”

“I understand.”, Sasuke did appear truly dead, according to his sources, and that must have been hard for a girl like Sakura; coming from a civilian family, no deep gashes or bandaged limbs were there to normalize the sight and smell of blood in childhood, other than the accidents occurring now and again at the Academy. He puts the first batch of battered vegetables into the oil. “But you must talk about this with Kakashi-sensei. He is your cell leader; you should follow his instructions, but it’s important you also tell him what’s on your mind.”

He looks at her, still so small and fragile as she stands in his kitchen. She keeps tucking a pink strand behind her ear, nervously looking in the direction of the jōnin, and Iruka wishes he could free all his female students from these stupid preconceptions their mothers nurture in them, this pose of fragility and blending in, this mentality of being subservient, of being pretty rather than strong. He wants them to know that they can crush mountains, like Tsunade-hime is famed to be able to do.

He decides to push her into the deep water this once.

“Kakashi!”, he yells, and boy can Iruka yell when he wants to, despite the girl hissing at him not to do this, please, “Sakura has something to say to you!”

It doesn’t take long for the other man to appear in the doorway, boxing Sakura into his kitchen. Iruka takes out the first batch of tempura, and begins to fry the second. Maybe Naruto won’t mind eating the vegetables so much (read: complain loudly) if they are deep-fried.

“What is it, dear?”, Kakashi chirps, and Iruka throws his sponge at his head for the nerve of it. (He dodges it easily.) He barely notices how he wrinkles his nose at the oil - does he not like deep fried things? - before looking down at his genin, who is tugging on her clothes nervously, and worst of all, silently.

The tempura crackles, and the rice cooker clicks that it’s done.

“I... it’s not important, Kakashi-sensei…”

…. this is a tiny kitchen.

“She wants to learn medical jutsu, but thinks you don’t want her to.”, Iruka sighs, taking the bowls out of the cupboard and pushing them into Kakashi’s hands. Sakura blushes sweetly, shuffling her weight from foot to foot and not meeting the jōnin’s eyes.

Kakashi hums, cocking his head to one side, before turning on his heel and heading back with a singsong, “And here I was, thinking you wanted some extreme taijutsu training...”

Sakura gawks before heading after him with loud yells of protest. Iruka chuckles to himself, finishing up the last batch of tempura while scooping out the rice. Naruto yells in delight when he appears in the room. “You’re wearing it!” 

Like Iruka could ever not wear the apron he bought for him from Wave country…!

* * *

**The beginning of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

Naruto is unusually chipper today, even managing to work together with Sasuke. (Kakashi just doesn't get it. What was between these two boys? His understanding of human nature would dictate that they should have grown closer, not further apart after Wave country. Eh. This is exactly why he was unsuitable to lead anything, especially a genin team. But does Sandaime ever listen to him? No. The answer is no.) They trod along one of the well beaten paths of outer Konoha, heading back after weapons training towards the Academy to give back the borrowed katanas and war fans, and then to collectively devour some good home cooking at Iruka’s.

“What’s gotten into you today?”, Sakura sighs wearily. 

(He knows he should get her started on medical training. He knows. She asked, even. She has the chakra control for it, Naruto is close range, Sasuke is versatile but leans towards close range as well - she should be. But... but all he can think of is Rin. He doesn’t want her to be another Rin, killed by her teammate. He shouldn’t be a cell leader.)

“Today is the day!”, Naruto whoops, “When I get the present from my ghost!”

“Your what now?”, Kakashi raises an eyebrow, thoughts derailed from their gloomy destination, a little worried about potential answers. No one outside of caretakers were supposed to be dropping off things in the boy’s dismal apartment.

“My ghost.”, the boy exclaims, “They bring me food for my fridge every week, and one time, when I was a lot younger and my sink didn’t work, my ghost fixed it for me when the stupid caretaker wouldn’t. They help me with a lot of things like that! And every year, they bring me the birthday present! I kept all the cards.”

The present. Not a present. Kakashi suppresses the guilt that threatens to rise up like bile in his throat, focusing instead on the very strange and hitherto unknown ghost, who is strictly speaking a threat to the village’s security. Just how had the caretakers not noticed? Weren’t they supposed to have been on 24 hour shifts around Naruto until graduation? (He has a sinking feeling he’ll discover things he won’t like if he looks into it.)

“Do you know who they are?”, Sakura tilts her head, as though trying to figure out a tricky puzzle. “They must be someone you know, right?”

“Eh? No… that’s why they are a ghost, Sakura-chan.”

Some very loud and rather deserved beatings later, Kakashi is still musing on this ghost-problem. It definitely needs closer inspection. When he assessed Naruto’s fridge months ago, it was mostly empty - that was, let’s see, a Thursday. So this ghost probably makes his rounds on Friday; Saturday means there is a higher chance of Naruto finding them out, and Sunday seems too far away, if what the boy said about the weekly nature of this unorthodox grocery delivery is true. Unless, of course, he has no sense of portioning his rations, which is honestly also likely...

(He tries very hard to ignore the voice in his head protesting the absurdity of expecting a twelve year old to take care of himself completely as they climb the stairs to Iruka’s floor.)

Motivation will probably be a key factor. (Naruto babbles as he runs about the hallway of Iruka’s home, still excitedly debating with his peers what he could possibly get this year, while Iruka yells at him once again for failing to put down his sandals in an orderly fashion.) His sensei was beloved by the village, but Naruto unfortunately was tainted by the association with the beast - what’s more, Minato-sensei’s parents had not only refused to take the boy in, but had also denied him a place in the family register, along with the name; a good, strong Konoha name, leaving him instead with the untrustworthy Uzushio Uzumaki of Kushina-san, who had no family alive to protest or care for her son. Yes, he could hardly imagine anyone with love towards his parents caring for Naruto in such a roundabout manner. That was the whole issue, wasn’t it, the need to be inconspicuous-

Iruka hands him a gaudy orange party hat with a grin.

“Will you put it on when I bring out the cake?”, he whispers, glancing towards the living room where the kids are arguing about something again, “I already hid the balloons in some _taiki_ , and I want to do the cake with an _azuke_.”

Ah. Well, maybe that wasn’t the huge mystery he thought it would be. Kakashi takes the hat with a snort at Iruka’s plan to summon the balloons and cake - what Uzushio blood - chiding himself for not having sooner realised that the person who would have wanted to give Naruto presents but couldn’t so far was right here in front of him.

Needless to say, Naruto loves both the colorful balloons, the ugly hats, and the blueberry cake, sniffling at the tankōbon of his favorite manga he gets along with Iruka’s very practical gift of a new pair of sandals and a set of mesh armor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named the two sealing techniques 預け azuke (keeping) and 待機 taiki (standing by), because I'm a nerd.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos! I'm sorry for the long wait, I had some medical things and then some IRL hectics to take care of... please enjoy this new installment of two (2) idiots parenting and falling in love.

**The middle of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

“Breaking them would be fun.”

Kakashi knows he's gone too far the moment he says it, the moment Iruka's eyes go cold and his voice flat despite yelling if he’s out of his mind. It's no excuse, but his knee-jerk reaction was an attack, and he hates himself for it instantly, wishing his sharingan could warp time, that there was a jutsu, any jutsu out there to undo the way Iruka looks like he is not wholly here in the moment anymore, but in the past instead.

Gods. Why is this happening here?

“... it was a joke, Iruka-sensei.”, he tries to backpedal. There is nothing else he can say or do here, in front of everyone; their ranks are like an ocean between them, and Kakashi hates it. “I understand you… and I'm sorry if my recommendation upsets you. But I stand by it.”

Iruka’s eyes are cold and his brows furrowed as he begins to protest before Kurenai cuts him off. Kakashi has to go for broke now, because he doesn't want any other prissy jōnin taking a verbal beating to Iruka, or a nonverbal one for that matter; he can feel Asuma’s contempt all the way from here, and there are bound to be others in the audience with a lot less restraint than the Sarutobi. 

This is getting dangerous now.

“Stay out of this… they're not your students anymore. They are soldiers under my command.”

Shit. 

Wrong words again, he can see it in Iruka's eyes, in that flash of pain. He curses the whole nomination proceedings to the moon and back in his head, but keeps his shoulders slumped and his visible eye cold and unperturbed.

(Jōnin are like sharks, after all. One drop of blood is all it takes to have one trying to put a kunai in your back... If he gives in to Iruka's demands publically, the respect that keeps him alive will crumble. Oh, Kakashi has learned the grave importance of peer respect all too well and all too young on his father's skin. He will not be disrespected.) 

But why, oh why did Iruka have to get involved so publicly? Kakashi anticipated some discussion of the topic after the nomination; maybe some worry for Naruto, but not this, this foolish outcry in front of everyone, in front of the Hokage. By the sage, it's like Iruka wanted to corner him into an inescapable situation! 

The room around them grows ever more tense. It quiets only a little when Gai steps in, but not enough, so he blows him off too, mourning the friendship he has probably burned with Iruka because he cannot let go of even an inch of what he had to scrape together after his father lost it all.

He hates this world. 

“Enough of this.”, Sandaime says, accepting the nominations and dismissing the chūnins.

He hates this rank.

* * *

Surely Iruka knows better. He must, Kakashi thinks, puzzled over this whole thing, on the why and the what. He heads out with brisk steps, shrugging the questions and comments of his comrades off after Sandaime dismisses them at last, aloof as though he is angry. (He wears more than one mask out of precaution.)

He feels around for Iruka once out on the open hallway, but he is gone from the vicinity. Why did the other feel the need to protest so? Was it just simple affection for Naruto?

Kakashi scratches his eye under the headband, frustrated and itchy. (Then again, what else could it be?)

After some thought, he decides to try the man's home. He owes him a private apology at the very least... and as he approaches over the rooftops and sees him pacing his balcony with a cigarette, he thinks he might even owe a greater apology. (How can pride lead to so much shame?) Because the only time he has seen Iruka - or smelled on him - smoke, was the night shit hit the fan about Unabara Shachi, a monster whose words he has probably echoed in the last hour.

He is regretting not talking about this with him _before_.

Kakashi flares his chakra, alights from the roof and lands silently on the balcony in front of the other man. There is an ashtray in the corner, full of buts; some seem new. He wrinkles his nose in disgust at it and himself.

“I’m sorry.”, Iruka says, leaning against the railing and taking a deep drag. The apology surprises Kakashi enough to make him momentarily forget his hatred for cigarettes and such things. “I… I should have tried to wait until…”

Something doesn't feel right about Iruka at all. He can sense that his chakra is drawn in closely, his fingers twitching on his thigh while his eyes are flitting about nervously; it’s almost like a panic attack, but… no, no, it is a panic attack. Must be, given the man’s history and what Kakashi has just thrown in his face, and honestly it’s not too surprising. He has to face the music, he fucked this friendship up.

Iruka rubs his face angrily with his free hand.

“I’m going crazy.”, he sighs, and Kakashi steps closer, leans against the railing so he is shoulder to shoulder with the other man. He can feel him tense then relax at his presence, and feels guilty for escalating the situation here.

“You are just new to this whole parenting thing, I think.”, he says to him softly. “It’s okay that you are worried.”

Iruka sighs the kind of sigh that is on the verge of a sob; he doesn't look at Kakashi at all, gaze fixed on the burning end of his cigarette as he whispers, “I’ve known about the exams for months, I helped organize them. It's not like this is _news_. But the moment you spoke… it was like… you know that feeling, when you get goosebumps out there? When you are picking up someone's intent?”

The gaze he gives Kakashi is piercing, and he has to admit that Iruka does look like he’s come fresh from the war, a strange look for the circumstances and he can't look away, “Suddenly I could just feel death. People are going to die Kakashi.”

Shivers cascade down his spine.

Logically, Kakashi knows this can't be true. This is a peacetime chūnin exam, with paperwork and judges and safeguards and exam personnel, nothing can go wrong even if the genin are made to believe it can. Well, maybe if one of the examiners are a bit crazy. But the point is, no one will die - no one has died in these things in quite a while. (Crippled, maybe.) But before Kakashi can open his mouth to reassure Iruka about all of these logical things, to say he is sorry and an idiot, the other takes a nervous drag of the cigarette and waves his hand impatiently in front of himself, turning away to blow out the smoke.

“Forget it.”, he mutters, gaze locked again on his burning cigarette. “It's stupid. I hope you can forgive me, I shouldn’t have done that in front of everyone. You were right to reprimand me.”

“It's forgiven and forgotten.”, he takes his hands out of his pockets, fiddling with his thumbs nervously, suddenly very much unable to look at the other man. “I...I’m sorry I said those things to you. I was surprised… and I abused your trust.”

Kakashi bites his lip. He’d grown fond of Iruka these past couple of Friday dinners, but knows his hasty wording derailed any possibility of a friendship. Iruka shrugs minutely, and he can feel the motion through their touching shoulders.

“It’s okay.”, the other man mutters without lifting his head, and it's like a punch in the gut. Absurdly, he wants to tell Iruka it’s not okay, that he should not be forgiven this easily, but he can feel Gai’s ever bubbling chakra approach quickly from the rooftops; any chance of continuing this conversation with Iruka in peace and quiet is as good as dead. He groans quietly just as Iruka notices too; he hums in surprise and withdraws, leaning away from Kakashi so they don’t touch. 

(He misses the contact instantly.) 

Then his best friend lands on Iruka’s railing, a couple of steps away from them in all his green spandex glory, and Kakashi suddenly has a very acute headache. Gai is just about to strike one of those extravagant poses too when he actually takes in who his rival is standing next to, promptly dropping to a more restrained simple thumbs up paired with a gleaming smile. It’s still unfathomably shiny, and he wants to die.

“My eternal rival! Iruka-san! I hope I am not interrupting your argument!”, he bellows, which is Gai-volume normal unfortunately.

“You are.”, he tells him bluntly, to which the other jōnin clutches his chest in dramatic shock, with some cries of Kakashi’s hipness and coolness. “And it’s not an argument. I’m simply discussing with my friend why he shouldn’t worry about my genin who is practically his son and whom he should really get around to adopting.”

(Iruka splutters, probably throwing Kakashi angry looks, but he can’t turn to look because he’d rather save Iruka’s plants from the wild gesticulation of the Green Beast.)

“Forgive me!”, Gai shouts, nearly knocking over Iruka’s tomatoes as he hops down from the railing, “I merely wanted to ask if you’d like to join the others and I for some drinks! We are celebrating!”

No way is Kakashi going to the Blind Bear when he can’t sit at his usual spot. Sooner will the hot hells freeze over and the cold hells boil. He squints at Gai, crossing his arms. 

“No thank you.”, he says blandly. “You guys have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow, if you are not too hungover.”

“Very well!”, Gai whips his head away, his fist coming up with such momentum towards the sky that Kakashi has to use a kawarimi jutsu on the poor flower in its way, replacing it with some of the ash. “I’ll challenge myself to beat our mutual record of drinks!”

“That’s great.”, as much as he loves Gai and his quirks, he was really in the middle of something here, “Now leave.” 

Gai at last seems to get with the program, quick sly looks taking them both in before the next wild gesture (the tomatoes wobble dangerously again). “Farewell, my eternal rival! Goodbye, good Iruka-san!”

And with that, he is finally off, racing towards the pub across the rooftops. Kakashi throws his head back and groans loudly. Iruka laughs, and it’s a pleasant sound; when he looks at him, he finds that the flitting of the eyes are gone, replaced by a small blush on his scarred cheeks. 

They smile at each other for a moment, before Iruka looks away again, putting the cigarette out on the bottom of his sandal before kawarimi-ing the but with his plant.

“Thank you.”, he says quietly, holding the flower in his arms. It’s a lovely shade of blue, with large petals. “For calling me a friend.”

Kakashi blinks in surprise a couple of times, before simply saying, “You are. Well, I hope you'd like to be, after this.”

Iruka gives him a look so honest and sweet, like no one had ever said those words to him before (something he finds impossible, because Iruka is so easy to be with and talk to and laugh with), that it makes his heart break a little. He clears his throat, and hopes his mask hides his sudden blush well enough.

“I wanted to sign them up so they'd face a challenge as a team.”, he says airily, scratching his head and trying to will his heart not to thump so loudly in his chest, “I doubt they’ll get any further than the second preliminary, but they need to get over themselves. Especially whatever Naruto and Sasuke have going on between them.”

Iruka sighs, stepping away to put the flower back into its proper place. This thing between the boys has been present at their weekly Friday dinners too, so at least he understands what Kakashi is talking about.

“I really can't blame you for that.”, he mutters darkly, examining his tomatoes for damage. Then he begins to chuckle, “There is no way Naruto will get through the first preliminary anyway. It's paper-based.”

“Oh really?”, Kakashi grins, pushing himself away from the railing and leaning into Iruka's space and doing an exaggerated leer, “Do tell me more, sensei.”

The other laughs, swatting Kakashi's shoulder playfully, “You can't bribe me, jōnin-san!”

“Oh, I’m sure I can find something. How about I take you to see that new Kaede-san and the Ingots of Gold at the movies...?”

Iruka smiles at him, and the autumn sun is warm on Kakashi’s face.

* * *

The next day as he is standing outside room 301, Kakashi can’t help but be a little worried. Logically, he knows Iruka is right in at least one aspect; most genin don't get nominated without at least eight missions of actual combat, so double that amount on paper. He frowns as he watches the clouds pass by.

There are some pretty bloodthirsty intents in there.

Should he pull them? Tell them it was great that they came here, but that was it? No, the boys are way too excited, if that match with Gai’s miniature self is anything to go by. (He was impressed with Sakura's save; maybe he really should get her started on medical jutsu.)

He decides the moment he sees them to let them fail on their own. Anything they do from this point on is just extra credit anyway; all he wanted was for them to be here. (They're almost late too, which is some sort of extra victory for him.) 

He wonders at himself, seeing their little blushes and squared little shoulders when he tells them he is very proud, how he had come to care so much for these three children in the past five months. Something churns in the depths of his heart, and it doesn't let him leave for a long while, thinking about Iruka's grim prophecy outside the doors, not until he hears Naruto shout 'None of you are gonna beat me!’ at the top of his lungs.

He smiles to himself.

Iruka is going to love this, Naruto shouting at a room full of chūnin candidates with his snotty little nose.

* * *

Kakashi has almost forgotten about the whole 'people will die’ thing by the time he is sitting in the jōnin lounge with a cup of tea, trying to ignore the smoke from Asuma's cigarette waging war on his nose, as well as the looks he keeps on throwing Kurenai when they think he isn't watching. Honestly.

The clock ticks. Maybe he should leave. But then again, Asuma was an ass last time they were on a mission, so.

“Eh. With the the genin in the exams, we’ve got a lot of time on our hands.”, he says, leaning forward. Kurenai leans further back, her blood-red eyes coming to rest on him; there is very little he can read from her gaze. 

Asuma though; he flashes him a fuck you look, before taking another drag and saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll be busy again before you know it.”

Kakashi raises an eyebrow. Have his fellow instructors signed their teams up out of the same reasons he did, fully expecting them to fail?

“Why?”, he says with a bored blink, watching the other man frown deeply.

“Word is”, he grunts, “this year's chief examination officer is Morino Ibiki.”

Holy shit. Is this what Iruka meant by ‘paper-based’?! He really could have given Kakashi at least some warning… but then again, Iruka's sadism scale was probably screwed up for life, so maybe an Ibiki-style exam was a tea party in his eyes. He lets himself cringe.

“That sadist? Why did it have to be Ibiki?!”, he mutters, and an image of his dejected and depressed genin flashes before his eyes. Kurenai shifts in her seat, looking questioningly between them.

“Sadist?”, she asks, obviously having the same thoughts as Kakashi judging by her uneasy expression. Asuma leans towards her, cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Kurenai, you’re still a new jōnin, so you probably don’t know…”

“Who is he?”, she asks a bit impatiently, and it’s the first time Kakashi sees any real steel behind her eyes; she’s obviously very protective of her team. He hides a smile beneath his mask, not allowing it to reach his eyes.

“A pro.”, is all Asuma says, dragging the tension out. Jackass.

“A pro? Of what?”

The other man exhales slowly, turning his head to smile deviously at the woman.

“Torture and interrogation.”

* * *

Later that day, after having heard back from the proctors that his genin have passed and are now secluded in the Forest of Death, Kakashi walks about in a daze; he wouldn’t have pegged his team to be able to withstand the pressures of Ibiki’s ploy. (Whatever it was. Let’s be honest; his team was cute, but they were impressionable little airheads still.) He arrives at the shrine of the Sage before he realizes it, passing under the red toriis. It's been a while since he's been here, but decides it wouldn't hurt to ask for a little benevolence for his students, seeing as the next section is under the jurisdiction of _Anko_ , of all people (according to the grapevine).

As he is clapping his hands for prayer, he notices a familiar chakra bubbling about the treeline, and when he is just about to retort to Gai hiding behind the trees that for someone coming from a long line of monks, he is incredibly rude, another less familiar presence approaches. Snail flares his chakra in warning and lands silently next to him. Kakashi had always liked his whimsical ANBU mask, the spiral painted on the porcelain, but something tells him this isn’t a friendly visit.

“Hatake-san. I have news that concerns your genin team.”, the black op says with a bow of his head, then turns to where Gai stands, “Maito-san, if you could please join us. It also concerns yours.”

His best friend is there in a flash, a speed that seems to startle even Snail slightly; but Gai adores his genin like the weird uncle he is at heart, and heaven forbid anything happens to them. He looks grimly at the ANBU, “Please, what is it?”

“Three genin from Kusagakure have been found dead by the stone buddhas at Mizudera. Their faces have been stripped off,” it’s like Snail’s words have punctured his lungs, because Kakashi can feel all air escape him. His genin… both Naruto and Sasuke can be high value targets for someone like him, “which Anko-san has identified as a technique used by Orochimaru of the Sannin. All jōnin senseis to the teams inside are to report to office six immediately.”

Shit, Kakashi thinks as he and Gai race through the trees, and instantly Iruka’s words come to his mind unbidden.

'Suddenly I could just feel death. People are going to die, Kakashi.’

Fuck.

* * *

**The middle of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka worries and he hates it. He is glad as fuck he had the foresight to blackmail Anko into letting him be the summon for Team Seven, because _contingency plan_ , but he hates that he cares so much, especially about Naruto, that he’d be reduced to this state of jittery worry, looking at his damn watch every half an hour, trying not to think about this stupid sense of foreboding that has been haunting him ever since Kakashi nominated them. He tries to concentrate on his work, on the papers and books scattered everywhere around him at the Forbidden Library desk, but it’s no use.

It's day five. He hopes they are okay.

His nerves aren't calmed by the conspicuous absence of Kakashi either. It's like he was locked up along with the genin, because Iruka can't find him anywhere, and Gai-san has a way of being cryptic while simultaneously _sparkling_. He really tries to hope it has nothing to do with the exams, and everything with the high likelihood of him being an ex-ANBU who can be recalled at any time, (he knows his statistics from heart by now, and he is fluent in Konoha bureaucracy), but the fact that the Hokage himself is subtly absent from parts of his routine since the day after the second preliminary began doesn’t really allow for any optimistic thoughts to fill Iruka’s mind. No, whatever has happened has sent silent alarm bells ringing throughout the upper echelons of Konoha.

Deconstruct, analyze, neutralize. Right. That’s what he should be doing. He needs to sort out what’s going on with Naruto’s seal.

But his thoughts linger on Kakashi. There is something about him that always puts Iruka at ease, a sort of quiet kinship; he finds that he is greatly relieved that their public disagreement had not put an end to their… _friendship_. He smiles to himself, tasting the word silently on his tongue. It’s been a long time since anyone has called him that. Comrade, sure. But friend… friend was a different thing, even if Kakashi probably didn’t mean it seriously.

* * *

His ears finally begin to burn. 

He takes a deep breath of relief, feeling the summons pull at him, so he shoves the watch into his pocket and stands hurriedly, crossing his arms to look somewhat cool and not like a nervous wreck, and then he is gone.

“Hey! Long time no see!”, he greets them with considerably more calm then he feels, but he was always a good bluffer - something his sensei made sure of. His eyes drink them in, the three little dumbstruck children, his subconscious already cataloging possible injuries and he has to consciously force himself to stop molding chakra for a healing. Oddly enough, his stomach knots itself the moment he sees Sasuke, not Naruto, that feeling of utter dread mounting again, and he pushes it as far down as it goes. He is okay. He looks exhausted, but he has all limbs, he tells himself. So he looks away, “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”

“Huh?! Why were you summoned, Iruka-sensei?”, Naruto shouts in that confused tone he always had, particularly where theoretical explanations were concerned. Iruka resists the urge to scoop him up into his arms, run home, and stuff him full of food.

“The summons were designed so we chūnin could greet the exam-takers at the end of the second exam.”, he explains as he steps towards them, “Luckily I’m the one greeting you!” Well, luck is actually his extensive knowledge of Anko’s very vanilla and very sappy romantic life that she doesn’t want people to know about, but the children don’t need to know he rigged the system. He pulls out that overly large watch and ignores their confusion as he checks their time, beaming at them when he finds they still passed, even if inside he is filled with horror at the notion that it’s still not over. “Phew! You barely made it... Congratulations! You all passed the second exam! This calls for a celebration! I wish I could buy you all a round of ramen-”

Naruto barrels into his side with a huge cry, the rest of his sentence lost in the impact, yet Iruka can’t help but laugh while he tries to chide him to take it easy and to let him finish. Of course, he isn’t paying any attention at all to him, just keeps yelling in joy about how they did it, and how happy he is, and Iruka’s cool facade falls just like that; he smiles softly, proudly at Naruto, running his hand through the blond hair once, before he jumps for joy again. Sasuke and Sakura sink to the ground in relief, and Iruka doesn’t envy them the monumental task of keeping up with the energetic orange goofball that has come to reside so prominently in his heart. He chuckles at their misfortune as he looks at Naruto, “You haven’t slowed down a bit, have you…”

His gaze shifts to Sasuke, who smirks at him. Iruka ignores his gut yelling at him that something is wrong.

“... I see”, the boy sounds barely awake, like he is on the verge of passing out, and his teammates stare quizzically at him, “If we had opened the scrolls before the exam was over… what would you have done, Iruka-sensei?”

He doesn’t answer quite right away, stepping back to gather the scroll with an exaggerated huff. He has almost managed to convince himself everything is okay. “Sharp as ever, Sasuke. As you’ve guessed, an important part of this exam was to demonstrate your ability to remain within the mission parameters. And since you’ve been specifically instructed not to open these scrolls…”, he gives Naruto a side-eye here, and sure enough, the blond is sheepishly tugging at his clothes.

“What would have happened?”, he wonders why Sakura’s her hair is frizzy and short.

“Our orders were specific. Any contestant would have to be put into a state of unconsciousness until the end of the second exam.” 

To his surprise, Sasuke actually smiles at his answer, turning to the other two who have apparently come close to this bad decision, judging by their shaken expressions. “Now, aren’t you two glad you didn’t open it?”, he teases, and Naruto claps his hands together in silent prayer. The dumbass, he probably wanted to forge the other one, like he always tried with his homework. (Iruka sometimes let him get away with it, because forgery is a good skill to have as a ninja.)

“Oh right! Iruka-sensei, what about the scroll on the wall?”, Sakura points behind him, “There are pieces missing and we can’t figure it out.”

(Ah, right, that thing. Sandaime can be a tad too philosophical sometimes for twelve year olds, but Iruka doesn’t have the heart to tell his hokage that. He welcomes the distraction from the terror in his gut though.)

“Who cares?! We passed…!”

(He cringes at Naruto’s loud burst, and sends a silent prayer for Kakashi, wherever he may be.)

“Wrong.”, he whispers idiot at this point, and the boy sticks his tongue out at him, “I’m also here to make sure you understand what it means. Read it again. It’s the hokage’s directive for all the chūnin.”

“Directive?”, the boy says with a squint at the wall, and Iruka hums to himself as he begins to roll the two scrolls for the assignment up. He glances at the wall again.

“Yes! Heaven is the mind, and earth is the body.”, the genin are silent behind him, so he looks back over his shoulder, pushing his forehead protector up a little. They are okay, he tells himself, everything is fine. “If you lack heaven, seek wisdom, be prepared… that’s basically, if Naruto’s weakness is his brain and academics, he’s got to study and prepare for the missions. If you lack earth, run in the fields, seek advantages. So if Sakura’s weakness is stamina and her lack of physical power, she has to train hard. And if you have both, you can succeed even in the most dangerous mission.”

“And the blank space? What goes there?”

“It's the kanji for 'person’. Thus, the last sentence means, 'These rules will guide a person's extremes.’ That's how they will be chūnin. These five days of survival were to test the exam-taker’s abilities, and you successfully passed that. Chūnin’s have a rank of military captain, and are responsible for guiding a team; knowledge, stamina and wisdom are all needed to fulfill this duty. You must face the next challenge with this motto in mind…! That... is all I have to pass on to you.”

He watches Naruto salute him, confident and proud, and it breaks his heart. He can't look at him, eyes dropping to the floor.

Usually, he doesn't see the now genin, unless it's a wave across the street or an excited greeting in the mission room; he never had dinner almost every Friday with any genin team, hadn't ever told any about his sensei. But… but these three have come to be a familiar and sweet presence in his life, and his chest aches when he thinks about what's still to come, how small and fragile they still are. 

“... but…”, he begins, quiet and honest before he can stop himself, “This last test… don't push too hard… Especially you, Naruto, I-”

“From the moment I received this forehead protector, I’m no longer an Academy student! There is no need to worry!”, Iruka is so surprised by the yell, so defiant and strong, that he looks back up; watches dumbly how the boy with the sweetest blue eyes grabs onto his old hita-itae, his gaze fierce and loving, “And this is the symbol that I am all grown up, right?! My temper sure hasn't changed, and I’m impulsive, but I’m not a kid anymore! Now… I’m a shinobi!”

He takes in the clenched little fists and dirt, the bruises and fatigue, and he knows in his heart of hearts that Naruto is right in that they have crossed an important threshold; that they are genin now, genin who have already managed two preliminary chūnin exams, but it's that dark corner of his soul that keeps murmuring that this is still nothing, this is a piece of cake compared to the blood Kakashi and him had lived through.

“I see.”, he whispers; smiles to himself, his gaze stuck on the tear in the orange jacket. “I’m sorry Naruto.”

He thinks about Anko telling him to have faith in Kakashi's decision, about their fight and their apology; and he realizes with a pang that he truly is on the other side of the table now, that he can't ever go back to being their _sensei_.

* * *

That terrible feeling doesn't go away at the introductions to the last prelim either, but he boxes it away ruthlessly, even when the alarm bells in his head threaten to go off loudly when he looks at the instructor from Sound. He’s just far too attached and worried to be reliable right now... Ibiki still gives him a long look that promises a cornering and some prodding, and he tries to give the glare equivalent of ‘fuck off and marry Anko already so I don’t have to deal with you while you are away on your romantic honeymoon at least’. 

Seeing Kakashi standing there with the other instructors does bring some comfort though, even if he seems more distracted than usual. He has faith that not much can go wrong if he is here.

Ibiki pulls him aside the moment the rounds begin, and Iruka’s day is almost lost to the off-lit corridors of T&I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, I almost forgot - you probably all noticed, but I love to pepper stuff from fics I read in here. I wanted to give a shout-out to HazelBeka's [Bleed out](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036728) where I liberally lifted Snail's mask from. (It's a murder myster for kakairu. What more could I want?)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all those that gave kudos and left comments on previous chapters. I hope you all enjoy the new chapter! Sorry for the delay, I had a lot of IRL stuff, plus I was setting up [a kakairu forum](https://kakairu.rocks/). (Come join! <3)

**The middle of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

There is a strikingly familiar pattern of stomps and gravel crunching under sandals heading towards Iruka, and he can't help but grin and sigh at the same time. (Admittedly, it's much quieter than it used to be. He tries not to think about it, or rather, think about it _again_.)

"Leave me alone!", the petulance in Naruto's tone could rival any five year olds, really. The boy appears around the corner, running straight towards him with his head turned, no doubt to see instead of _sense_ his pursuer. Pfah, has he forgotten everything he taught him?! Some soldier! He feels ridiculous for having entertained the notion that Naruto has grown at all.

"You… stop-!", a poor medic, clad mostly in white, is just a second behind that orange goofball. He sounds terribly out of breath, like someone unused to chasing a boy with almost endless amounts of energy through Konoha's streets everyday, and looks to be on the verge of giving up.

Oh, but all it takes is a quiet lift of Iruka's leg. Not even lift, no, just sort of… extending it sideways. Just stretching, yes.

Naruto falls flat on his face with a huge thud, (tripping over since he was not paying attention like he should have - so it was absolutely educational). The medic stops a couple of steps away, panting and bracing himself on his knees, looking at Iruka like he is some kind of heaven-sent hero.

"Naruto.", he grabs onto the boy's arm, lifting him to his feet. There is a bloody scrape on his chin that is already healing, and it makes Iruka desperate to go back to the Hidden Library. He puts on a stern tone. "Why are you running?"

The boy pouts up at him, but makes no move to be free of his grasp. "I wanted to have ramen with you, to celebrate, but this jerkface wants me to stay in the hospital for the whole night. The hospital! Do you know how badly it stinks in there?! Just ask Kiba, he knows!"

"Naruto, it's protocol, and it's his job."

"It makes no sense, I am okay. And I just slept in the forest for, like, a week -"

"Five days."

"- and my milk is probably totally spoiled by now too. He should just let me go home.", and there is that pout, that quintessential squint up at him, just like the one from a couple of months ago after the Mizuki incident yet somehow still different, and it jostles something deeply in Iruka. He schools his face and clamps down on it hard.

"How about this", he slips his hand away, and definitely does not notice how there is no small hand coming to hold his own, "I'll buy you any and all ramen you want tomorrow after my shift is over, provided you spend the night in the hospital. Even the extra deluxe with the pork belly."

Naruto grins up somewhat cheekily at him, latching onto his arm with both hands, the same as always again. "Deal! But you have to walk me there and listen to everything that happened!"

Iruka smiles, nodding quickly at the medic sagging in relief. "I have some onigiri from the shop. Wanna eat it on the rooftop?"

"YEAH!"

* * *

Kakashi plans to get smashed when the prelims are over and the kids are in a mandatory overnight at the hospital, (with at least fifteen ANBU watching over Sasuke and a general wanted broadcast for Kabuto issued). He thinks he might as well do it with someone; however, Gai is permanently glued to Lee’s bedside, and he is pretty sure Asuma and Kurenai are ripe for a night of drunken confession/making-out/love-making that he does not wish to witness in any way, shape, or form, so he buys some good-quality beer and knocks on Iruka’s door.

“Kakashi!”, Iruka grins when he sees him, all but yanking him and the beers inside. “I didn’t know you read minds!”

He hands his beers over with a chuckle so he can take his sandals off. “I assume from your greeting you have nothing against my plan to consume excessive amounts of alcohol together before I’m forced to head out for a month of training and camping with our resident tragic avenger.”

“You are not taking Naruto?”, Iruka frowns just a little; he expects some form of indignation or bargaining on Naruto's behalf (when is he going to adopt him, seriously), but surprisingly, the other just bites his lip and quietly asks, “Was Sasuke attacked by Orochimaru?” 

Kakashi stares in bewilderment.

“Oh, you know. Naruto rambles, for one. And there were some... moods.”, Iruka mutters with a shrug, not quite meeting his eye, “That, and the way you were probably recalled… I’m not a complete idiot.”

He says it like he hadn’t deduced a highly classified, top secret event that ANBU has been frantically trying to hide for the past week, as though this was honestly evident, a simple puzzle, and for a split second, Kakashi marvels at Unabara Shachi’s skills at evaluation: Iruka could have been deadly. Still, it makes him kind of want to scream and his shoulders drop just a little in defeat.

“You know you are not supposed to know that.”, he might be whining, but he’s had a rough week! A rough week Iruka just unraveled and made somewhat pointless! Absolutely not fair! Iruka laughs at him, sweet and clear, and the sound lifts his spirits instantly.

“Sorry”, he smiles, lifting the six packs, “Let’s drink instead!”

So they settle down by the low table, eating peanuts and pretzels and whatever as Kakashi recounts in order first Sasuke’s match, then Sakura’s match against Ino as well as Naruto’s match against Kiba in a more accurate version then what the blonde had probably delivered, (“... and then… he farted in Kiba’s face. Don’t look at me like that. It happened, I was there, and the worst thing is it worked, and Kurenai will probably never forgive me.”). They spend a long while like this, Iruka eventually complaining about his new set of students until Kakashi finally gets really tipsy - which is as far as he is actually ever going to go on account of well-bred paranoia (this is what smashed means in his book). Iruka doesn't seem affected much either, says he has the Umino Drunken Master technique, but Kakashi isn't sure if that was a joke or not. Either way, they are both pleasantly buzzed when he says, “As it is, I have a question for you, oh sensei of young children. What on earth is a harem no jutsu, and why does Naruto think Ebisu is a closet pervert?”

To his absolute delight, Iruka blushes up to the tip of his ears, hiding his face behind his hands. “He promised. He promised to stop.”

This… confirms Kakashi’s suspicions somewhat about the nature of said jutsu, and about how the two facts are possibly connected. He grins.

“It’s a henge and a bunshin combined.”, Iruka mumbles behind his hands, “It’s exactly what the name implies and you’d imagine a twelve year old with unsupervised access to late night television would come up with.”, Kakashi does try to imagine, but it seems all so silly, especially if he adds the closet pervert part to it; he laughs quietly, unable to stop even when Iruka points angrily at him. “This is not amusing at all! He taught that stupid thing to Konohamaru, who is trying to teach it to his friends! People are going to think I’m some sort of pervert, teaching their children inappropriate behaviour! It’s the stuff of nightmares!”

Unfortunately for Iruka, this just makes the whole thing even more hilarious, because now he is imagining the academy sensei getting attacked by badly formed henges of naked ladies while trying to teach basic chakra theory to eight year olds, and he is pretty sure he’d give anything to see that in action. Or maybe perform such a harem no jutsu himself. He laughs until Iruka kicks him gently in the leg. Several times.

* * *

He stays the night, enjoying the way Iruka smiles at him in his sleep, basking in the trust of the action. (He’s absolutely certain this is the first time it happens, despite him having slept here before.) He traces in the warm light of the bedside lamp the shine of his dark hair as he waits for all the sounds of the neighborhood to still, lazily flipping through his book, hoping the familiar motion will lull him to sleep. But when he does turn the light off, Kakashi finds that sleep still won’t come to him. Even though he’s pleasantly buzzed and his bones are aching, his mind, like some whimsical cat, keeps wandering back to the nominations, to Iruka’s… gut feeling.

Was it a fluke? It had to be a fluke, right?

He tries to tell himself that no one can predict the future, but they live in a world of ever-mutating shinobi arts, with talking animal summons and huge destructive mythological beasts tucked away into loud children - sometimes solem, horrifying children -, and the idea of the _possibility_ keeps rearing its ugly head again and again in the silence of the night. 

After all, people had died - and by Orochimaru’s hands no less, or as a consequence of whatever scheme he has been spinning. The heavy prospect of another war hangs above their heads, and despite their merry mood just a couple of hours ago, Kakashi knows Iruka can feel it too. The worry lurks in the corners of the dark room, that whisper that you could have just imagined. 

But there is no way to test the hypothesis; after all, Iruka had already dismissed his premonition as anything but an anxious fantasy, and there was no telling if it would even happen again, much less when. He keeps his good eye on the dark outline of Iruka and counts his breaths as he thinks, the tactus for his adagio thoughts. It’s why he notices right away the hitch of his breath, and is unsurprised by the abrupt motion of the other jerking awake. There is an almost silent choke as Iruka scrambles to sit, and it has Kakashi reaching for the light switch of the small bedside lamp hurriedly.

Iruka shivers, pulls away violently when Kakashi lifts his hand to comfort him.

“Sorry.”, Kakashi whispers, at a loss for further words.

A heartbeat later, Iruka replies, “A beast. There will be a beast that tramples on us.”, and his eyes are focused miles away and his face is pale, and Kakashi isn't so sure this isn't a prophecy after all.

(He makes tea, and they fall asleep again, Iruka apologizing for his silly nightmare.)

* * *

He enjoys the morning less than their evening, seeing that a typical Academy day starts at six thirty, so his bedmate is up and about at ungodly five thirty.

(If he was writing this, he’d underline it three times, maybe even circle it, because the _horror_.)

Anyway, Iruka leaves him a key and lets him sleep, which is really quite touching considering how they almost managed to ruin their friendship a little while ago. Still, he can't really fall back asleep now, (not with his thoughts filled with the word beast), so Kakashi gets up about half an hour later, after an appropriate time of lazily flipping through Icha Icha in Iruka’s futon, (denying his mind the path of thinking any further about whatever Iruka dreamed of). He folds the borrowed uniform and puts on his own from yesterday, heading to the kitchen to steal a piece of toast. Well, a cup of tea to go with it wouldn’t hurt anyone... so he rummages around the cupboards, and stares a minute longer than necessary at the sweets; there are packets of pudding, some oat bars, but no chocolate at all. 

He smiles, makes his tea, and sips it staring at the slow sunrise from the barstool. 

He peeks at the large notebook to his left, tucked into the corner underneath the napkins. Last time there was an interesting manual on seals he’s never seen before under it, but this time it's just the notebook. He feels only slightly bad about opening it.

On top of the first page in Naruto’s chicken scratch of a handwriting is the huge title ‘Iruka-sensei’s list of food to cook’, with what appears to be a really badly drawn dolphin. Kakashi can’t help an unimpressed snort, gaze shifting lower to the first heading - which is probably Iruka’s neat hand - titled ‘Dishes favored by Naruto’. There is, surprisingly, an actual list, although the boy had written ramen in huge katakana on the margin with a heart. The next two pages are dedicated to Sasuke and Sakura, with a spiky porcupine for the former and what is probably a branch of flowers for the latter by Naruto; he smiles at the doodles, and how Iruka seems to have been evaluating their reactions during dinnertime all along.

And then there is the next page, this time with only Iruka’s writing. It reads, ‘dishes favored by the shameless freeloader’ - and on the margins, the last two characters from his name _Kakashi 案山子_ have been struck out, replaced with _ka 価_ to make _anka 案価 cheap_. 

He cringes. 

It’s not that Iruka isn’t right; after all, they have dinner here every week, and he doesn’t even buy the sake every time. He fishes out a pen from one of his pockets, and writes ‘Sorry. Marry me?’ with a _henohenomoheji_ beneath it, promising himself to pay more attention to his spending. Reading further, he is surprised to find that both salt-broiled saury and miso soup with eggplant are underlined as his favorites, and that tempura has been marked as particularly bad. It seems Iruka reads him better than he thought… he scribbles a little heart by the saury, and writes 'always delicious, five stars’.

Finished with the notebook, he tucks it back into its place and does the dishes out of habit and a bit of guilt. Heading towards the exit, he stops by Naruto’s room; he doesn’t know why, but he peeks in, as though he is expecting the boy to be lounging about on the bed with one of his mangas. It’s incredibly disorganized, a blinding contrast to the rest of Iruka’s home, but his mathematical mind doesn’t fail to notice that the room is smaller than it should be, just slightly, when compared to the kitchen wall. 

He can’t help himself today, it seems.

Stepping over scrolls and whatnot, Kakashi makes his way to the rear wall, observing that the room is painted so as to trick the eye into not noticing the missing space. He spends a couple of minutes looking for it, and then finally finds the door to the panic room; weapons, rations and medical kit are all neatly stacked inside. He hums contentedly, closes the door back, and hopes Iruka won’t mind terribly that he took a peek. 

He leaves after putting the futon away, Iruka's keys tucked into his inner vest pocket.

* * *

Kakashi is enjoying his last hours of peace and probably Sasuke-less state of existence, trying to not dwell on the attacks, on his weakness, on the uncomfortable dread that sits like a stone at the bottom of his stomach, (on the word beast), when Kurenai slides into the booth next to him, Genma and Raido not far behind. He smiles at them, glad for their company before he leaves tomorrow, grabbing at a handful of peanuts.

“My, my.”, Kurenai purrs, just as Asuma and Gai arrive at their table with glasses of beer, “Who did you spend the night with, Kakashi…?”

Not this game again, he thinks with a sigh. He knows his friends are frustrated at how he keeps his cards close, but he finds that listening to Gai’s endless tirade about how his strings of anonymous hookups ‘is not the right way to live’ and would he just ‘please find someone stable’ is more than enough for him when it occurs roughly once a month. (And it’s a testament to their deep friendship that he ignores these outbursts and all attempts at matchmaking.) So Kakashi is just about to roll his eye when she pulls a long dark hair from the back of his vest.

Oh no.

Gai draws in a loud shocked breath, clutching his chest theatrically while Asuma begins to chew on his cigarette in a way that signals only bad things for his privacy. He shoots Kurenai a dark look, but she is too busy holding the hair out against the light.

“Brown.”, says Genma in awed whisper.

“My rival! Has the springtime of youth come to you at last?! Is it time for us to welcome a beauty to our midst, one who has conquered your wild sauve heart?”

Kakashi ignores the poses his best friend throws at him, and tries to grab the hair away from the kunoichi to little success. Usually, he takes particular care after engaging in... sexual relationships, exactly because of what is about to unfold; but as last night's “bender” wasn't actually one, he had neglected to take his usual precautions before coming to the Blind Bear. A fatal mistake, really.

“It's quite long, now isn't it?”, Kurenai’s tone is sweet as she twirls the offending hair about in the air, “Not many long, brown haired people in Konoha…”

Kakashi decides it's better if he pulls his mask up and sulks for the rest of the evening, trapped by his own paranoia in the booth. Asuma laughs at his misery, taking the hair gingerly from the woman, and he holds it taut for their group to inspect. Gai slams his palm onto the table.

“She must be a beauty to be in possession of such locks!”, he says fervently, no doubt planning Kakashi's wedding once again, “And as we all know, a shinobi!”

He should object to both assumptions pertaining to his love life, but he is not about to hand his nosy friends more ammunition. He sips his beer quietly and quickly, ignoring their words.

“Are we sure though?”, Raido leans forward, eyeing the strand of hair suspiciously, “He’s been known to misdirect us. What if this is a sham?” (He’s always liked Raido.)

Asuma chews on his unlit cigarette a bit more, thinking this possibility over; Kakashi gives him his best unreadable look, praying his jerk of a friend will fall for it. “Nah.”, curse all Sarutobi for reading people so easily, “He just wants you to think that because he messed up.”

Genma punches Raido’s arm in excitement, cackling like the maniac he is. “Long brown-haired list of kunoichi, go!”

It's precisely at this moment that Anko whirls in; Kakashi is glad to see her, and not only because of the momentary distraction she provides. “Yo!”, her voice is as loud as ever, as though she hasn't come face to face with that monster of a man, and they all cheer for her, loud greetings and clinking of glasses as she pulls a chair up, “What did I miss?!”

Gai’s open palms hover underneath the hair in Asuma's grip as though it is a holy relic. “My rival”, he says with utmost drama, and are those tears in his eyes, “has found the love of his life!”

Anko laughs in little snorts, until Genma slams a fist on the table.

“Concentrate! This is serious, we must figure out who it is, or he’ll go ahead and get married without saying a word! You know how compulsively secretive he can be!”

“Oi.”, Kakashi tries to interject, but his other friends nod in solemn agreement. Really now. He is not that bad.

“Hm. Reminds me of Iruka's, the length.”, she squints at it in Asuma's hands, and he is momentarily distracted by the strange feeling of jealousy rearing its ugly head in his chest; he frowns at himself. Sure, the thought of Anko and Iruka _together_ together is bizarre, but they're both adults, and besides, he can always smell… he is derailed from this train of thought when Genma slaps his palms onto the table once again.

“That's it! It was hate sex, wasn't it, Hatake? He got under your skin at the nominations, and now the two of you are sneaking around hate fucking!”

He draws his eyebrows together sternly as he looks at Genma, otherwise committed to his policy of silence. That's just preposterous. Could he at least try a bit harder?

“Oh, don't be ridiculous!”, Kurenai snaps, and that's about the most unsettled he’s ever heard her, “Iruka-san is a very sweet person, if a little too attached to his students. I'm sure he apologized first.”

Gai chokes on his beer at these words, and they laugh as Anko pats his back; well, except for Kakashi, who is wholly unappreciative of the current topic and the humor derived from it, even if he is understanding of why they all have great need of laughing at something. He curses himself for not checking before coming to the Blind Bear amongst these sharks he calls friends. (He pouts only a little.)

“I must disagree with all of you, my dearest friends!”, Gai would probably jump to his feet, but as it is, he just gesticulates wildly, unaware or uncaring of his silent plea, “It is obviously a slow romance, filled with deep and passionate emotions! A true love in this dark age.”

Raido gasps as though he just realized something, grabbing onto Genma for support at his dizzying revelation. “At the mission desk last time, before the exams! He came to hand in his report to Iruka-san, remember? But why did he blush as he did...?” The table falls into silent contemplation at his words, serene faces and understanding nods, and Kakashi utilizes his fine training to keep up a bored facade instead of being terribly embarrassed. Raido, poor soul, tries to stare him down, but it was a lost battle from the beginning.

Then Anko waves her hand dismissively with a snorting laugh.

“Okay guys, come on. Obviously, it's not Iruka's. I mean, I don't see what Kakashi here has to offer at all.”

 _Pardon?_ Kakashi is so surprised he almost begins arguing how he does have a lot to offer, thank you very much, but reels in his protests at the last minute, staring angrily instead. Sure, he isn’t a catch, but he has a few good qualities at least. Luckily, he has Gai to cover for him.

“Blasphemy!”, if it wasn’t for that last time when Gai flipped the table and they were banned for a month until they promised it wouldn’t happen again and they actually nailed the table down, Gai would probably be flipping the table now in hissing rage, “Kakashi would be a wonderful partner for Iruka-san, I am sure of it! It’s even in their names, dry field and ocean, like yin and yang!”

… This... wasn’t exactly the kind of argument in his favor that he was hoping for, but he’ll take what he can get. 

Anko points an accusing finger right at Gai’s face, a little too invested for Kakashi’s liking in their humorous game. “What can he offer Iruka? As soon as his genin are trained, he’ll be out in the field again day and night. Not to mention the porn! That is not the kind of reputation an Academy sensei needs in a husband if he wants to make principal!”

Kurenai gasps softly at the word husband, a hand hovering in front of her mouth to hide the tiniest of smiles, but he can still see it sitting next to her. Is this what girls feel like when they are forced into a marriage? This is absolutely horrible.

He can’t wait to leave tomorrow morning.

* * *

“Hey, hey, Iruka-sensei!”, Naruto yells at the entrance of the onsen, waving his arms wildly as he begins to run towards him. Iruka chuckles at the sight, relieved he still managed to be on time despite a turbulent shift at the mission desk. An older, somewhat uniquely dressed white-haired man with a huge scroll strapped to his back steps out just as Naruto wraps his arms around his midriff, but he pays no more attention to him than a cursory glance; an armed older shinobi, and he leaves it at that.

“Guess what, guess what?”, Naruto chatters below, “Closet-pervert Ebisu won’t be tutoring me anymore! Instead, this super-pervert will!”

The man turns towards them, but makes no move to come closer. He looks cross at being called a super-pervert, for which Iruka can’t honestly fault him, however much his eyebrows are trying to escape into his hairline in shock at these words. “I told you not to call me that.”, the man mutters.

“He really helped with my water walking exercise! He hit this pressure point on my stomach, and then-”

Iruka summons his ax with one hand while at the same time grabbing Naruto by the collar with other, pulling him back as he steps in front.

(There is no such pressure point. Just a dangerous seal to be manipulated.)

“Hey, hey, Iruka-sen-”

“Naruto. Momotaro.”, he cuts him off before he can really begin to protest, ordering him to hide in his safe-room. Where is Ebisu, he thinks, mind jumping to possibilities. “Now.”

His no-longer-student hesitates just a minute longer than he’d like, before making five kage bunshins and running off in various directions (as they’ve planned before). (He is such a good boy, and Iruka won’t let anyone hurt him, not if he can help it, no, he’d rather die.)

Super-pervert looks mildly surprised, but doesn’t move. “You are his caretaker?”

“No.”, Iruka answers, allows his intent to kill grow sharper and heavier. The man grins at him, the _underestimating_ grin.

“Listen”, he raises his hands to show him open palms, “You are probably too young to have met me back then, but I’m honestly not a threat.”

“A stranger modifying Naruto's seals without the hokage's knowledge is exactly that.”, Iruka counters, shifting his weight as though he is getting ready to throw his weapon. He is not, but those who underestimate him rarely take the time to think he is telegraphing moves on purpose.

The unknown man's face falls, and he slaps himself softly on the cheek. “I… if you put it like that…”, he mumbles, before regaining his confidence and pointing vehemently at him again, “No! I was removing someone's handiwork that stopped him from using his chakra properly. I'm the good guy here!”

“And I should believe you, a strange old man touching young boys in the onsen because…”, Iruka adjusts his grip on his weapon, head tilting forward as he analyzes his opponent, the old-style mesh armor, the getup, the sake-inscribed headband; he has come to fear in his youth this generation of shinobi, always two-steps ahead, always cruel. (Maybe the price of their survival.) He won’t let Naruto fall prey to any of their schemes for power and glory.

The super-pervert stares back grimly at his words and posture, his frown deepening when Iruka allows the full scale of his murderous determination to be felt, speaking softly and seriously for once, “You’d put Orochimaru to shame with that intention, boy.”

And just like that, he takes Iruka’s bait. (They always do.)

He doesn’t really see the charge - he is outmatched for that -, just the sudden appearance of the man in front of him, the grip around his wrist ablaze with a blue fire. He can see the surprise in the older man’s eyes just as he delivers a chakra-laden punch to his stomach in return, and Iruka’s ax-wielding arm flies free from the weak-grip (a grip that relied on pain from a ninjutsu he couldn’t feel). He brings his ax down swiftly, but the blade only strikes the ground, dust and dirt flying, enough cover to dismiss his ax and summon his bow instead, shooting a sharp arrow - behind him.

The old man barely dodges in time. Iruka watches it almost graze his face, feet already propelling him forward, switching out his bow for a tessen. He gets lucky, his opponent distracted enough by his quick weapon change to allow him to get up in his space; seeing that his sensei had spent countless months perfecting their close-combat barrages, more than one of his attacks connect. 

It’s almost meditative, and he is tempted to give in.

His opponent is far above him in level, he knows. Maybe he is still not taking this completely seriously, or, Iruka concedes, he doesn’t want to hurt a comrade. Still, he makes the mistake of trying to knock Iruka out with a blow to his side, and his legs wrap around the old man’s neck swiftly, the black-widow takedown so finely ingrained into his subconscious that he barely registers the great thump with which his enemy lands.

Super-pervert stares at him from the ground, rolling into a crouch quickly. Before Iruka has a chance to summon his next weapon and charge, however, Kakashi and Ebisu slide in between them, back-to-back.

“Jiraiya-sama”, Ebisu half-shouts, “Please forgive us!”

“Forgive?!”, Iruka yells back indignantly, gaze shifting only momentarily from the super-pervert to Kakashi facing him, hoping at least he'd understand now that Ebisu has proven himself to be compromised, “He was manipulating Naruto’s seal without anyone’s knowledge or approval! His place is in the Tower, explaining himself!”

Kakashi’s face goes from concerned to experated instantly. (Iruka wants to scream.) “Ah.”, he says flatly, holding his hands up placatingly. “You are absolutely right to be suspicious, but please trust me when I say that he is not a threat to Naruto. He is just a careless old man who should have known better; just because some of us know him, he can't go around doing as he pleases.”

His voice is so earnest and gentle that it jerks Iruka away from his protective fury, battle lust stuttering to a halt inside him; he tries to hold on to the feeling, but it slips through his fingers like bloodied water. Unaware that he has come to scrutinize that quarter of a face, he whispers, “Do you promise me I won't regret this? That Naruto is safe? I won't let anything happen to him, you know that.”

“I won't let anything happen to him either. Trust me.”, he knows, somehow, that Kakashi is smiling at him underneath his mask, and oddly it's enough. The tension begins to lift from his shoulders.

Maybe it’s okay. Maybe he isn’t alone in this. (Kakashi would also die for Naruto, he knows.)

“Oh! You are his parents!”

Startled, they both turn their heads to the super-pervert - apparently the sannin Jiraiya -, who lifts his pinky with a goofy grin. Ebisu goes red in the face, and Iruka ends up being dragged away by Kakashi very quickly.

* * *

Kakashi was suspicious of Ebisu's claims to say the least, but the other has never proven himself to be a liar, and was distressed enough to be accompanied even if the whole thing was a fluke. So he hurries with him, his sullen journey towards home after an afternoon in the Blind Bear with his teasing friends forgotten, thinking there won't be much of a problem.

There is a bit of a problem, as it turns out. 

He sucks in a breath when they arrive on the onsen's roof, killing intent permeating the neighborhood while Iruka wraps his legs around Jiraiya's neck and brings him down onto the ground swiftly and forcefully, rolling back onto his feet with a fluid motion. He barely has time to admire the takedown or to think about why someone like the old man would have such murderous will towards Iruka, before they jump in between the parties.

It could have been easy from there. It was going nicely, really. (There was a Moment, he’ll admit.) He just wishes Jiraiya wouldn't have done that pinky bit, and tipped his partner-in-crime over into Angry-Mutter-land.

“The nerve!”, Iruka seethes quietly, still dragged along by Kakashi's vice grip on his elbow. The streets part for them obediently, “I should just go to Sandaime. Who does he think he is, going around doing that?”

Now, Iruka might be referring to the implication about their relationship, but Kakashi chooses to interpret it differently. Wonders himself if the old man has strategically picked his date of semi-return to coincide with Naruto's genin age, so he may pick him up for training out of some bizarre combination of guilt and duty. “Well, he is Naruto’s godfather.”

Iruka digs his heels in and manages to stop them both. He turns his head in frustration to look at the scarred face, the… the rather murderous face. Mouth, meet foot. “I’m going to kill that man, Kakashi.”, it’s only a marginal relief that the whisper is vehemently angry instead of that cold intention he’d seen once before. Marginal, because Iruka still makes a move to turn around and possibly castrate one of the most powerful Konoha shinobi alive, so he isn’t left with any other choice, really, logically, than to first try and drag him away from the potential mauling, and failing that, throw him over his shoulder, eliciting what can only be described as the angriest yelp he’s ever heard.

“Kakashi, put me down and let me disembowel that man or so help me I will tear you from limb to limb and eat your heart for breakfast!”

“Very romantic dear.”, he quips as he struggles to hold him while putting as great a distance between them and Jiraiya as possible; he might be physically stronger, but Iruka - ah - was - well, uhm - slippery like a fish, thrashing about as though out of water. 

“I mean it, I will hang that man by his guts on the front gates, and if you don’t let me go right this second - right now, Kakashi, I will pull out your liver and feed it to the alley cats! I fucking swear, I will tie you down and splatter you with honey and milk, -”

“My, my, we aren’t even married yet”, Iruka smacks his back hard with a closed fist at that, and Kakashi lets out a soft ‘oof’ of pain. Still, the distraction was working, so he gives it another shot, “Let's get Naruto, I'm sure he is worried!”

This seems to finally knock Iruka out of his circle of anger-murder-bitterness, which is good riddance because he was not that up for a wrestle with a belly full of two beers. “Sorry. You are right.”, his unwilling companion mutters, suddenly very still, “Put me down and let’s go.”

“No eating my heart for breakfast?”

“No.”, he mumbles, and Kakashi lets him down, watches the stray strands of hair that have come loose blow about in the wind as Iruka turns on his heel and hurries towards his home. He follows quietly, tries to let Jiraiya's words likewise vanish with the autumn breeze, but to very little success. They bounce off in the inside of his skull with annoying frequency; parents. Bah. Iruka, sure, - in fact, he is _this_ close to getting on his knees and begging the man to just please adopt the boy already -, but Kakashi? No, Kakashi was a failure to his sensei's son. He had failed him when he was growing up alone, and by all accounts he is failing him now, unable to train him like he needs it, stuck between him, sweet Sakura and the last Uchiha who has been targeted by one of the most powerful and maniacal shinobi this village has ever produced.

Kakashi is anything but a good sensei and he sure as hell is not deserving to be a parent.

* * *

Iruka unlocks his door and undoes his wards, hurriedly toeing off his sandals. The home seems deserted, but Kakashi shuts the door behind them, locking it and allowing the wards to reconnect.

“Sparrow!”, Iruka shouts, already making a beeline towards Naruto’s room, “Where are you living?”

Using a children’s tale as a codeword seems hardly secure, but it’s probably what the boy could remember most easily, next to the abundant number of hand signals and formation markers he has been dumping the team with. (He is confident they are the only genin team in Konoha who know eighty percent of ANBU hand and arm signals.) He stops at the door, and watches Naruto tumble out of the safe room, running for Iruka’s open arms.

 _This_ close. He’ll fill out the adoption papers himself.

“You forgot the baskets.”, Iruka murmurs into the blond head without much heat, giving the anxious boy a tight squeeze. 

Kakashi will _beg_.

“Sorry.”, Naruto mumbles, pulling away to look them both over, “Was there a fight?”

Iruka says 'no' just at the same time Kakashi sighs ‘yes’ and they look at each other questioningly. He tries to telepathically convey how it doesn't make sense to hide this from Naruto as he tilts his head in question, until finally Iruka gives in and shrugs. “It was a misunderstanding, that’s all. However… we do need to talk about some ground rules regarding strange shinobi, Naruto.”

The boy actually pouts at him, like he did nothing wrong, and Kakashi can feel a headache coming up at the sight. He groans inwardly, slumping against the doorframe. "Really…?!"

“Absolutely.”, Iruka flicks Naruto’s nose, like he always does when the boy is up to no good, and continues in a stern tone Kakashi could never hope to emulate, “You can’t allow anyone to get near your stomach. That’s where the seal for the fox is, and if someone does something to it, it could kill you.”

“Oh.”, Naruto rubs his face, comically unperturbed by this implication when compared to the crying boy he’s taken out of the village for the first time just a month or so ago, “I... I didn’t know that. So when the super-pervert messed with my stomach, he was undoing what the creepy guy did in the forest? Because I’ve been having trouble getting my chakra to do stuff right ever since then.”

‘Creepy guy in the forest’? 

Does… does Naruto mean Orochimaru? Did he mess with the seal as well, not just Sasuke? Kakashi feels like his legs will give out at any minute - how is he supposed to protect both of them from a monster like that?

“What?”, Iruka gasps, obviously having come to the same conclusion as Kakashi, tugging urgently on the boy’s jacket, “Show me, show me right now!”

Kakashi hurries over with a flick, startling Naruto a little as he crouches down in front of him as well, watching with apprehension the markings slowly appearing on the pale skin; he recognizes his sensei’s handwriting almost immediately, but… not much else. It seems the old man had removed whatever was there.

Iruka’s voice is shaky with relief when he says, “Thank the gods.”, dropping his face into his hands. Naruto pats his head affectionately.

(That’s it. He will publically get on his knees and plead for these two idiots to be a family.)

“I think…”, he begins softly, “It would be for the best if Naruto trained with Jiraiya-sama. Super-pervert.”, he amends at the boy’s befuddled look, “Since I have to leave tomorrow morning and I won’t be able to.”

Iruka groans from behind his hands in dissatisfaction, but Kakashi knows he understands what he means. The time when Naruto was relatively safe within the village is now over, and until he is strong enough, they need all the help they can get in keeping him alive and unharmed.

“Hey. Can we go get some ramen? I’ve been thinking about it all day, and you promised me, Iruka-sensei!”

* * *

Kakashi ducks out of ramen of course. He’s somehow already had more these past couple of months than he had in his whole life before, and the line has to be drawn somewhere, preferably before he becomes comatose from noodles. Besides, he wants to find one ‘Super Pervert’ before he turns tail completely; tracking Jiraiya down is generally a monthly affair, and he doesn’t have the luxury of time right now.

He finds him at Konoha Bank, of all places, staring down at the busy crowd from the large balcony that many shinobi use as an entrance (despite requests by personnel to do otherwise).

“Long time no see…”, he begins, leaning against the railing. He tries to keep Iruka’s anger out of his mind, squashes his own resentment and whatever may be lurking within him for the sake of tactics, but it’s harder than it has ever been, because he understands why the words godfather had the effect they had. “How many years has it been since the time you were back?”

He curses internally. He is no match for Orochimaru even without trying to protect two genin, and he needs someone with the power of Jiraiya on his side. Beggars can’t be choosers. (He wishes he was better with words, could rope the old man into this with notions of duty and promise eloquently, but… Kakashi was good at fighting, and not much else. Photography, maybe a little.)

“Kakashi…”, Jiraiya cuts through the nervous silence that has settled over them, laden with all the things they don’t discuss, “I’ll train Naruto from now on.”

Well... that went easier than expected. He stares in surprise.

“The Third hokage was wise to place the boy under your supervision. He’s been well looked after.”, lies, so many lies, “But… even someone of your remarkable abilities might not be enough to get him ready…”

He frowns at these words; ready for what? What does the old man know about Orochimaru’s plans, and what is he not telling him? (Does Sandaime even know he is back in town? He bites back the urge to laugh at himself. Probably not.) “... whatever do you mean?”

“... I’ve been keeping an eye on Orochimaru ever since the day he fled Konoha, because it was evident he would return. For a long time, he kept mostly to himself, but then… he joined an organization.”, he’s rarely heard him speak in such a carefully measured way, and it makes him shiver to think what is to come, of what he knows and what he is not telling. He arranges his face into careful nonchalance, in the hopes it will buy him more information; Jiraiya doesn’t like pain, fear, or attachment.

“Organization? What organization?”

The old man studies him for a moment, looking through his insides and trying to peel back layer after carefully placed layer, as if he was still that young boy, scared and grieving and hurting and so very see-through for the likes of him. 

He isn’t.

“I don’t really have a lot of details, but it seems to be a small syndicate of nine shinobi that calls itself the Akatsuki. At first they struck to small-scale cloak and dagger stuff. Nothing dramatic. But you knew something big was coming, considering who they are. Almost all of them are listed in the bingo book as S-class criminals.” Shit. As Iruka would probably mutter under his breath when he thinks he can’t hear him and the rice is stuck to the bottom of the cooker, shitty shit. “... and among them is Itachi.”

Fuck.

“When nine shinobi like that get together it’s not because they want to do charity work. So you see where this is going...?”, it’s going in the direction of ‘everything getting fucked up’-ville, and Kakashi has to will his heart to slow down and his head to stay in the conversation, lest Jiraiya change his mind about revealing his intel, “Recently the group started splitting up… Orochimaru went off his own, while the others paired up and dispersed. They’ve been searching for new jutsu, among other things.”

“Any proof that one item on their shopping list has nine tails?”

His murmur comes out sharper than he had intended. Nine S-ranks after Naruto, when the boy is barely at the level of chūnin? He wonders if he could pull an undercover off, but then there is Sasuke and Orochimaru’s plans and goddamn Itachi in this group, and taking both boys together would be next to impossible. Kakashi doesn’t stand a chance alone, and the realization is a deep chill in his bones.

“It’s a distinct possibility. It makes sense. The nine-tailed fox does have one of the highest levels of chakra.”, Jiraiya finally straightens, signalling the end of this discussion, “Sooner or later, Naruto is going to have to deal with who and what he really is, that’s the boy’s destiny.”

(Not that it’s a destiny he asked for or should have gotten, a voice suspiciously like Iruka’s mutters in his head.)

“For now, focus on Sasuke. It’s up to you to teach him how to use his sharingan, especially since Itachi is part of the organization. I’ll keep an eye on Naruto… leave his training to me.”

They need to leave tomorrow, if not today. They have no time to waste.

* * *

He doesn't leave the next morning.

He doesn't leave, because not only are the medical team overlooking Sasuke vehement that the boy stay for at least two more weeks (he hadn't counted on such a long recovery time), but Sandaime calls an emergency jōnin assembly right as he steps out of the hospital as well.

It's not totally surprising, but apprehension is like a heavy stone in the pit of his stomach. After all, Orochimaru had made his presence felt without even revealing the slightest clue as to how he has managed to infiltrate the village…

He sits uncomfortably in the second row, nerves frayed by the various leading clan heads settling down behind him, in the places of higher prestige (that are better defendable). Anko nods curtly at him as she arrives with Ibiki in tow, taking a seat next to him without any comment. The tension becomes palpable in the room as everyone else filters in, reaching its crescendo when Sandaime and the council take their seats.

(He is reminded of that day, so, so many years ago, of his first war council jōnin assembly, trembling inside.)

“Hayate was killed last night by an enemy of the village.”, Sandaime says curtly without further ado.

“Wha… Hayate was…?”, the words slip out before Kakashi can stop himself, a shiver running down his spine.

“Yes. He was found by Kikyō castle this morning…” 

Sandaime throws him a sharp look as he says this, but his gaze shifts to Anko suddenly when she blurts, “Was the opponent Orochimaru?”

Everyone seems to hold their breaths, everyone except Kakashi it seems. He turns to her slowly, head whirling with possibilities. “No, we can’t make that assumption. Hayate was most likely tailing that sound spy, Kabuto. Although it’s clear that Orochimaru is up to something…”

He tries his best to focus on the following discussion, on Raido’s notion of cancelling the exams (thinks about Iruka’s warning of a beast, about Naruto’s seal, if he is a target-), on Sandaime’s denial that seems like a death wish (because revenge against the hokage must be part of his endgame, this is a delirious notion-), on the inevitable conclusion that another village has allied itself with one of their most powerful missing nin against them (it has to be someone with access during the exams, and his mind jumps to Sand and economic statistics and reports and-) but his brain is holding so many different trains of thoughts at once, it’s a wonder he even manages to comment on the flimsy nature of the verbal promise of alliance.

He isn’t assured by his hokage’s vow to fight at the end of the assembly at all. He needs to train, and he needs to leave right now.

War is coming, his bones say.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left me comments and kudos! :) I hope you will enjoy this new chapter - hopefully it isn't too disjointed, I wrote it in parallel to re-reading the manga.
> 
> **Trigger warnings:** blood, death, war. I try not to be graphic about it, but we have reached that arc; please expect canon-typical violence.

**The end of Kaminazuki (神無月, “Month of the Gods”; October), the year Naruto graduates**

There is the smell of war in the air. 

It sounds crazy, but Iruka is sure of it. There is a scramble, just on the edge of his security clearance, people and positions shifting ever so slightly; but he knows. He knows that in the wake of Orochimaru’s appearance, the tentative silk of peace that has been woven had been unchangeably ripped. He doesn’t feel ready for another war, especially one where he is forced to sit and wait for the attack to come, wondering if he can protect his class, wondering if he can protect Naruto.

Ever wondering of what is to come, helpless. 

He takes a deep breath, glancing at his sole framed calligraphy on the wall before speaking.

“Naruto, come here. I want to tell you something important.”, the boy turns his head from the TV to blink curiously at him, obediently standing up and trotting over to the oshiire when he beckons. Iruka slides the door open, pulling out a large brown box from one of the top organizers, placing it in his quasi-son’s lap. “This is my box.”

Naruto squints at him in confusion. “Yeah…?”

“The one you need if I die.”, the boy frowns mightily at these words, “It has all the papers for this apartment; everything is paid for and insured, and you are set to inherit it. My will is with the lawyer whose business card is in there. There is also a list of what you will need to do, so don’t worry. It also has all the certificates you might need if there is any trouble with the-”

“Iruka-sensei!”, Naruto protests loudly, cutting the rest of his well-prepared explanation off, “You are not… you are not going to die! You’ll always teach at the Academy, and you’ll see me become hokage, and -!”

“I’ll live forever…?”, Iruka questions sternly. Naruto just glares at him, jutting out his chin, his little hands gripping the box tightly. He pets the blond head affectionately, shaking his head. “Naruto, you are a shinobi now, you have to face the reality of what this means... We can die anytime, anywhere. I don’t want you to be unprepared.”

“I liked it better when you babied me.”, the boy mutters, and Iruka pinches his cheeks in revenge, laughing when he tries to knock him away with little success. “Stop it, Iruka-senseiiii…!”

He thinks about teaching Naruto how to handle an ax properly all evening.

* * *

**The beginning of Shimotsuki (霜月, "Month of Frost"; November), the year Naruto graduates**

“Man, that hit the spot!”, Naruto sighs as he puts down his ramen bowl, smiling the smile of one content on account of a full stomach. “Thanks, Iruka-sensei!”

“I’m sure you’ve been training very hard.”, Iruka smiles, enjoying the wide grin he receives. He glances only momentarily at Jiraiya on the boy’s other side, sipping his sake silently. “Keep up the good work!”

“I’m going to do it soon, you can bet on it!”, the end of the sentence is barely understandable, swallowed by a huge yawn, and he resists the urge to laugh fondly at the sight, patting the boy’s head instead. “Gonna go home and sleep a bit first, though, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Bye Iruka-sensei! Bye Super-Pervert!”

Jiraiya turns around angrily, face flushed. “I told you to stop calling me that!”, but Naruto ignores him, and Iruka tries his best to bite his lips and vanquish his smile, waving instead to the disappearing figure of the boy. He wishes he’d sleep at his place, mostly on account of the general mess and dirt he has managed to accumulate in his tiny flat, but he doesn’t want to force the issue, not when Naruto wants to be… grown up, maybe is the right word; not when he is trying to prove, perhaps especially to Iruka, that he isn’t that child anymore. (But he is. He’ll always be to Iruka, no matter how many years will pass, or whatever declaration the boy will make. He was a fool to even consider it, really. Phah. A headband is just a headband.)

Besides, Naruto is still twelve. He shouldn’t have to keep a tidy apartment.

“So, who are you, exactly?”, the sannin turns to him as soon as the boy is out of earshot, gaze quizzical over his sake cup, but a hint of a smile on his face. Iruka studies the two dark markings running down his cheeks for a heartbeat before turning his head the other way. “You put up a nice fight for a chūnin.”

“I was his Academy teacher.”, he answers curtly, tries to think of Kakashi and his promise of being civil. (‘He’s a sannin. Please don’t try and pick a fight with a sannin while I’m gone. Please?’) Gosh, he wishes he was here to throw him over his shoulder and take him away before he tries to push his chopstick into the man’s brain through his eyeball. Kakashi is such a good friend like that.

“Well, I guess we hadn’t been properly introduced, Iruka-sensei. I’m-”

He’ll tell Kakashi he tried. He did!

“I know exactly who you are.”, Iruka spits, turning back towards the old man angrily, “You are the one who truly abandoned him.”

Jiraiya’s nostrils flare in anger, but he doesn’t move, and doesn’t speak, frozen in the face of his continued hostility.

“Kakashi told me. You are his godfather. You were the one adult in his life who should have been there all along, you could have given him a home, you could have lifted him out of the orphanhood anytime, but you didn’t. That’s everything _I_ need to know about _you_.”

The man drops his gaze back to his sake. It’s a hollow victory for Iruka, because all this doesn’t undo the pain, neither past nor future, and he stands up, shuffling around in his vest for his wallet. He’s lost any appetite he had anyway.

“I won’t apologize for the past.”, Jiraiya speaks abruptly, but doesn’t look at him at all, just lifts his cup to his mouth again, “It happened, and nothing I say will make anything happen another way. But I’m here now. At least let me do something right now, Iruka-sensei.”

Iruka huffs, pays for the food and leaves. He’s too old to believe lies like that now.

* * *

Sage save me, Kakashi thinks to himself, as the two twelve year olds attempt to outdo each other in emotional trauma in front of him. If he thought there were some similarities between his past self and Sasuke before, boy do now the crippling emotional histories scream ‘samesies’.

He should have brought Naruto along to combat this.

“Your eyes tell me how badly you wish to kill the one who put you through the hell called loneliness.”, Gaara says, and Kakashi can practically feel Sasuke's hackles rise, a tiny, burgeoning killing intent forming within him, “Yes, that look…”

“Alright, timeout.”, he interjects, stepping somewhat between them before the months of progress towards something healthy in Sasuke are undone completely, trying to steel his voice into one reminiscent of what Iruka uses on a misbehaving Naruto, “Gaara, is it? I don't care what you think you know about Sasuke, you shouldn't talk as if you can see Sasuke's inner self! What was it that you were trying to accomplish, coming all this way out here before your match?”

“Fighting is all about putting the lives of others and your own on the line. To fight to the death; only then can the victor be assured of the meaning of his existence…”

Wow. Somebody should have given this kid a hug.

“So you're saying you want a death match instead of a tournament. Is that it?”

Gaara turns back to Sasuke, and Kakashi regrets not stepping directly between them.

“Uchiha. You must be wishing for the same thing. Deep down inside, you wish to determine if you deserve to live. You wonder if you are really strong enough, stronger than the one you are dying to kill.”

Alright, now that's really, truly enough. He steps forward, stares and lets his intent permeate until the boy becomes hesitant enough and turns tail. He is powerful, Kakashi knows, but also smart enough to recognize that going against someone of his experience isn't wise, not yet. He breathes a sigh of relief when he is finally out of sensible range, turning around to a discomfited Sasuke.

“Right.”, he says with a cheerful smile, clapping his hands together, “I think we should focus on your techniques of assassination.”

Sasuke nods at him. “Good idea.”

* * *

**The middle of Shimotsuki (霜月, "Month of Frost"; November), the year Naruto graduates**

Iruka is just stepping out of the locker room, ready to head into a grueling training session under Fumiko-san when a genin runner skids to a halt in front of him. It takes him a moment to realize she is from the hospital unit, and already feels bad for whomever she has come, and moves to step out of her way, but she just looks at him expectantly, blocking him.

Rude, he thinks. After all, what could she possibly want with him? He hasn’t been on anyone’s notification list for years.

“Umino Iruka?”, she asks curtly, clicking her pen, and Iruka stares at her in confusion. “I’m here to inform you that Uzumaki Naruto has been hospitalized, wing one, floor two.”

And just like that, he can’t breathe.

Naruto? In the hospital? His thoughts begin to race; Naruto never goes to the hospital, the Kyuubi heals whatever injury he gets, unless it was too severe, like the loss of limbs or - and what was that man doing to him?! Oh, he never should have listened to Kakashi, he never should have let an old one like that anywhere near Naruto. What a fool he was!

“Please sign here that you’ve been notified, Umino-san.”

Iruka signs the form hurriedly, and then runs like his life depends on it, not even bothering to change out of his training gear. How could he let this happen? He should have known not to trust that old man, sannin this or that, he growls as he jumps from roof to roof. He should have known he'd push Naruto recklessly over the limit, would try to break him, to twist him into his own image or whatever form or goal he is trying to reach, much like Shachi-sensei did. (They are all the same, all of them heartless and cruel and unforgivable.)

How could he have handed Naruto over to someone like that?

So stupid.

The nurse jumps when he lands in through the window, sliding the last couple of meters to her desk with leftover momentum on the waxed floor.

“Uzumaki Naruto?”, he blurts, grabbing the edge of the counter so he’d stop. He might not hear her reply over his own drumming heartbeat.

What a fool.

The nurse, probably a chūnin trainee flicks through her sheets, smiling at him reassuringly when she finds the entry she was looking for. “He is in stable condition and in no danger.”

Oh.

Oh, thank the sage.

He could throw up from relief at these words, and has to bow his head, gripping the wood lest he faint. He tries to breath deeply, but he only manages shallow gulps of air the first couple of times. The receptionist doesn't seem very perturbed by this at least, offering him a glass of water which he takes gladly.

“He was admitted with severe chakra exhaustion, and has so far been unconscious. Most genin his age do this once or twice.”, she smiles at him sweetly, pushing the visitation form under his nose with a pen, which he manages to sign with a shaking hand. “He'll be fine in a couple of days… Umino-san. He is in room three.”

“T-Thank you.”, and by some grace of the gods, Iruka even manages to smile at her, trembling legs still carrying him as fast as they are able to the room.

Fucking hell. He is an idiot.

Naruto looks so, so worn down - exhausted, really, pale against the crisp white hospital sheets. He hurries over, heart beating in his throat until he can place his fingers on the boy’s jugular, can feel the steady rhythm underneath his fingertips, sinking down in relief on the edge of the small bed. He smoothes some stray blond hairs out of his face with a deep sigh, and stays there, holding his tiny but calloused hand, until the kind nurse from the front comes by to tell him that visiting times are over at seven o’clock.

The blond little boy with the sweetest blue eyes is still so small, no matter what anyone says.

* * *

The next day, Iruka sends a short note to Kakashi via messenger bird before class. It costs him a good ten minutes of sweet-talking the teenager on duty as well as some petty cash, but the early hour pretty much guarantees his success, because no post-nin wants to deal with anyone at the crack of dawn, much less an Academy sensei. (If you look at the regulations very strictly, this is illegal. Iruka is getting alarmingly used to looking at the rules squinting and from sideways when it comes to Naruto.)

It reads, ‘Nursing swallow. Thinking of dissecting toad.’. He’s happy that it conveys everything about the situation Kakashi needs to know.

Not that he has time to find said toad. No, he’s made the barter with himself that until Naruto is up and about, his days would only consist of work and hospital visits; when he is satisfied that his blond troublemaker is back to his usual self, then he’ll go murder a legendary shinobi. It’s a good plan of action, because it gives him the chance to somewhat keep his promise to Kakashi about not doing that, while allowing for some time to mull over some other things too.

Like that terrible, terrible fear when the hospital runner found him. Or the even more terrible fear when he realized that this was only a stroke of dumb luck - Naruto’s paperwork still hadn’t been updated, and he was listed as the responsible Academy instructor, despite having been an active genin for months.

(He hadn’t slept a lot last night.)

Maybe… maybe politics should go to hell, he thinks as he sits by Naruto’s bed on that uncomfortably small chair, holding his little hand. He is still asleep, laying there almost exactly as Iruka left him yesterday. Because sure, he could name Naruto as inheritor of all his property, and there is the Form 4… but… what if it’s an operation, or… or things just happening the other way around, like right now, with Naruto in the hospital...

He bites his lip.

Iruka knows what he wants. Hell, he knows he could walk over there right now, get all the paperwork, fill it out, and apply for it today. He knows, because he has entertained the idea enough before that he’s looked into it.

But maybe… maybe that is not what Naruto wants. Not when he’s been trying so hard to prove just how far he’s come, and Iruka had promised himself that he wouldn’t be selfish anymore.

* * *

“Oh-oh.”, Kakashi sighs at the note in his hand, letting the bird go; it flies away with a squawk, flapping its wings noisily at them for not giving it a treat. Sasuke looks at him expectantly. “Naruto is in the hospital. Probably overdid his training.”

Their supper boils over the crackling flames, and he stirs it absentmindedly, hoping that ‘toad’ had enough sense to give Iruka a wide berth now that he isn’t there to physically remove him.

“Hey, Sasuke, can I ask you something about your time at the Academy?”, his resident avenger sighs, arranging the spare firewood neatly, but nods. Kakashi drops the note into the flame; with any luck, Naruto won’t recuperate until the tournament. “Was Iruka always so soft with Naruto?”

The boy frowns. He brings over the two bowls for him to scoop some stew into before slowly saying, as though mulling over the memories, “No. I mean, he was always exceptionally hard on him, but Naruto was always a dumbass, getting into trouble. He used to complain that Iruka-sensei had it out for him… He started in Iruka-sensei’s class, before Natsume-sensei had her baby and Iruka-sensei became our teacher, so I always assumed he was just hard on him because he flunked twice.”

“Maybe he was just trying very hard not to have preferences.”, Kakashi chuckles, staring down at his Friday night meal that is not on par with his usual menu, “But I guess the cat is out of the bag now…”

Sasuke sighs. “He should just adopt him already.”

“Right? I knew you were a genius.”

Sasuke glares at him, but there is hardly any heat to it.

* * *

On day three of his hospital day, Naruto finally wakes up. Well, had woken up while Iruka was still at the Academy, and apparently defended Rock Lee from some Suna shinobi or genin or someone. The tale is a little unclear on that detail. Either way, Iruka suppresses a scream of anguish most vehemently as the boy narrates these events in a somber tone most unlike him, and doesn’t fail to note that Shikamaru, level-headed, unperturbed Shikamaru, looks pale and disturbed.

He wishes Kakashi wouldn’t have nominated them, and hopes the man has the decency to at least hiccup wildly as he thinks of him.

“Are you coming to the exams tomorrow, Iruka-sensei?”, Shikamaru interjects into the space in Naruto’s ramblings, no doubt wishing to change the topic.

“Ah, I have class before noon, but I’m going to try my best to make it after that. I want to cheer for all of you!”, he smiles at them, hoping it would ease their discomforts a bit, and hey, he still has some charm left because the corner of their mouths do pull up a little at his words. “I’m sure you’ll both do great!”

* * *

(The next day, as he sits at his desk in the stuffy teacher’s lounge staring at Natsume-sensei’s forgotten baby bottle, he wonders if it is actually a good thing that he can’t watch Naruto get destroyed by Neji. He’s heard such horrible things about that boy’s prowess from Ginko-sensei who taught him, and he’s had so much more time to prepare… not to mention being a Hyuuga.)

(Kakashi better be hiccuping like mad.)

* * *

Sasuke stares at him, hands on his hips, channeling all the energy of Kakashi’s own displeased twelve year old self as Kakashi tries to drink from his flask without showing his face to subdue the newest rounds of hiccups he’s been experiencing. He leans against the tree with a grunt.

“We are going to be late.”, his student clicks his tongue imperiously, “I told you we should have left yesterday.”

I’m so sorry Sensei, he thinks amid a new hiccup as Sasuke frowns up at him. So sorry.

(Of course, Sasuke can’t know that being late is exactly what Kakashi wants. If Sasuke is disqualified, he can’t battle that monster of a boy; if he can’t battle, he doesn’t leave Kakashi’s side. Of course, Orochimaru might not choose to make a move now, but he also might: aside from his animosity towards Sandaime, he finds he knows very little about what this other legendary shinobi seeks to accomplish, making all of Kakashi’s theories a shaky castle of cards. 

Not that… that he could stop Orochimaru, he thinks with a shudder back to their meeting, but he could increase the boy’s chances of escape, especially now that they’ve concentrated on speed. He owes that to Obito at the very least, to give his nephew as big a window of opportunity at survival as possible.

It would have been better if he could have told him that survival of a war is what he was training him for. That the chidori wasn’t against Gaara; it was for staying alive. But Kakashi doesn’t want to turn Sasuke into himself, shivering at his first war council, deliberating tactics before he had his first kiss. No, he wants to let Sasuke be a child, whatever that means, and he’ll handle the adult stuff of war and risks and monsters.

He lied, he thinks to himself with a frown, at the nominations. They aren’t his soldiers at all, are they?

No, he hiccups up at the floating clouds. But he’ll protect his kids the best he can.)

* * *

Well shit, Kakashi thinks. Iruka is going to kill him. How did Naruto beat Hyuga Neji? Kakashi was pretty sure that that match was fail-safe, and he wouldn’t have to worry about anything else than tending to the boy’s bruised ego later over some ramen. He even asked Genma to make sure no lasting harm came to him, just to keep his heart squarely inside his ribcage and outside of Iruka’s stomach. (It cost him half a year’s worth of beer!) He even had some calculation that he might run off to get consoled by Iruka or Jiraiya, and if anything were to happen involving the Sand or the Sound or Orochimaru or another war, he’d be far away. 

But apparently, he miscalculated Naruto’s ability to grow again. He smiles, - still somehow proud, despite his plan going up in smokes -, and hopes someone taped it so he can watch it later. (Maybe if he invites Iruka over to do so he won’t get murdered…?)

He still has one more throw of the dice and he’s tried particularly hard on that one...

“Well, we showed up all flashy and the like, but… could Sasuke have been… disqualified…?”, Kakashi scratches the back of his neck, cute little murderous intent of Sasuke lashing against him, even though he did give in and use a variant of the teleportation jutsu to get them here faster. It all seemed like a moot point by then anyway.

“Geez, your tardiness must be contagious…”, Genma looks like he is on the verge of crying, from how he is biting the inside of his cheeks trying not to laugh at him. He is probably not going to hear the end of it later at the Blind Bear anyway. “Don’t worry… we pushed Sasuke’s fight right ‘til the end. He hasn’t been disqualified.”

“Ahaha! That’s good! Good!”, he laughs his best fake laugh. 

Shit.

He glances at Gaara up in the waiting area, and tries his best to suppress his own sense of foreboding, making his way up to the audience instead to where he can feel Gai’s bubbling chakra.

(If anything happens - there is no one else he’d have by his side.)

* * *

He sighs, eye and senses roving the arena. Eight ANBU, two small teams - that is not enough, not in a space this big, not if they want to defend properly against whatever could come… His eye lands on a familiar pink head as he approaches Gai, and bites back a frown that no one can see. It’s not that it’s surprising that Sakura is here, but maybe he can provoke her into leaving. (To be safe, if anything happens today.) Although with Sasuke down there his chances are slim, it’s still worth a shot.

“Oh, sorry, sorry! You must have been worried. Sorry for not contacting you at all.”, he grins, but is surprised that she doesn’t yell, or berate, or does anything he’s become accustomed to. No, she just looks down towards Sasuke sadly, and it breaks his heart, because she looks just like Rin in that moment, sweet Rin mourning Obito, and he wants to tear his eye away but can’t let his mask fall. 

(Not when his children need him to be the adult, with his head on his shoulders and ready.)

“That doesn’t matter anymore…”, she says softly, barely audible even in the hushed anticipation of the crowd, “Kakashi-sensei… On Sasuke-kun’s neck, there was a mark, right? Is that-”

“Don’t worry.”, he lies through his teeth with a smile, drinks in the relief on her small face. (That’s what adults do, isn’t it? Lie?)

* * *

There is an arm shooting out of that ball of sand, monstrous and clawed and Kakashi’s heart drops to his stomach, and he hopes against all hope this isn’t what Iruka meant that night, when he said ‘there will be a beast that tramples on us’. Please no, he thinks, watches Gai instantly move two steps to be in front of Lee, and wonders if he could jump fast and far enough to save Sasuke.

… and then, the shell falls apart, and only a bleeding Gaara stands there. 

He looks up in relief.

Feathers.

“Kakashi! Is this…?”

“Yeah, it’s genjutsu.” Shit, he thinks, slamming his palms together and shouting, “Kai!”

War has come again.

* * *

Iruka feels the monumental shake of the attack right to the depths of his soul. The rhythm of the battlefield vibrates within him even as he gathers his students, leads them through the cellar and the hidden passageways, through to the entrance of the mountain safe rooms. (He ignores the deep gnawing dread the sight of the cracking Monument instills in him.) It rings in his ears as he summons his bow, taking up his position as first guard by the external door, watching giant snakes and toads grapple by the east gate.

He doesn’t allow himself to get lost in it, cycling through memories of Naruto, of Friday night dinners, of love.

Reminds himself that if he gives in, he is good as dead, and he’d be no use to his students that way.

* * *

Kakashi uses the momentum from his last leap kill to climb on to the edge of the roof of the stadium, intending to use the bird’s eye view to better determine a strategy. Two giant chakra signatures loom in the forest, in the general direction of where his kids were headed, and the thought threatens to undo his concentration - he tells himself two means that even if the one-tailed beast is loose, someone else is there to save his team.

He glances behind his back.

The toad henges into an almost perfect replica of the kyuubi.

‘There will be a beast that tramples on us’ indeed.

* * *

Iruka feels fear cascade down his spine when a giant form of a beast, a one-tailed beast appears in the distance, and he can feel it charging through the whole village, a collective shudder of every shinobi, friend and foe. He hopes against all hope that those three little children are nowhere near there, that the Kyubi isn’t awake enough to register another beast in his territory and seek revenge; that somehow, by some miracle, they’ll all live. That Naruto will live, that the nine-tails won’t tear his body apart, that he’ll survive this.

“Boss toad?”, Anko lands next to him, and he turns his head to see the gigantic amphibian, even larger than the one that was fighting at the east gate before, try and tackle the beast. They share a moment of stunned silence, before she shakes them out of it by saying, “The village has been secured, Ibiki ordered a full sweep, and we’ll probably have a briefing in an hour. You’ll get a runner when the Academy lockdown can be lifted. Stand guard until then, we might have some stowaways.”

He nods, before they clap each other on the shoulder. “Stay safe.”, he tells her, and watches her run over the rooftops, eyes following her until the earth shakes beneath his feet, and his gaze snaps back to the monstrous fight.

The nine-tailed beast bites into its opponent with giant fangs, tails swishing wildly behind him.

Iruka drops his bow.

* * *

The dust settles, but it doesn't mean things are over. Kakashi does a quick headcount on his friends and is relieved to find almost all of them on their feet and about; Raido is rushed off to hospital alone. He and Kurenai are just getting ready to undo the genjutsu and investigate the extent of the infiltration, when Tenzo lands next to them.

He smiles at the familiar cat mask, “Glad to see you are okay. How many have we lost?”

Tenzo sighs at him in frustration, because he is not supposed to ask and he isn’t supposed to answer. “Eight. I need all jōnin on the roof by hokage-sama.”

Doubt worms its way into his mind, the lie he has been telling himself that Sandaime was still strong, still capable, still able to protect them breaking apart ever so slowly; it crashes to a million pieces the moment his feet touch the tiles and he sees the body - old, bloody, rigid.

“Shit.”, Asuma chokes next to him, and he reaches out to squeeze his shoulder without a second thought; they naturally cluster around him, like baby birds huddling in their nest against the cold. He looks at Jiraiya, at Ibiki, at the older jōnin slowly making their way here. No one says anything else, not until Jiraiya crouches down and closes the eyes of the man that is no more.

“He hadn’t appointed a Godaime, now had he?”, he asks them as he stands, looks straight at Kakashi with a gaze he doesn’t want to return or see. Never, he thinks, there is no god or buddha or bodhisattva out there that could make him. “I propose we defer to the current chain of command until the village is secure. The council can take over then, and the vote can be held.”

He wonders how long before he can see if his team is still alive.

* * *

Iruka is half-mad by the time a runner arrives and lockdown is lifted; he doesn’t know where to run, how to search, who to find, but he tells himself he has to try the hospital first, has to make sure Naruto isn’t there, maybe bloody and bruised and critical but alive, before going to the forest to try to glean his pieces while cursing everything there is.

The hospital is filled to the brim with the frantic living, the dead lining the pathway outside under sheets, a silent guard to their suffering and the chaos descending after the battle. He struggles his way up to the desk, shouts Naruto’s name three times over the ruckus before he is given a room number; bumps and curses and pants his way through the corridors and the throngs of people, asking again and again for directions, heart beating wildly in his chest that he has at least made it here in one piece. 

They didn’t say if he was alive, of course.

When he opens the door to what appears to be a supply room hastily converted to hold patients, hand shaking, he finds Sakura sitting on the edge of the bed pushed haphazardly into a corner, pale and bruised, while Sasuke tries not to tremble from whatever side effect of a jutsu is criss-crossing his skin. On the bed next to them, Naruto sits groggily.

His tears begin to fall before he knows what’s happening, and he runs to the bed and gathers him in his arms and presses his face into his hair and sobs.

“I-Iruka-sensei!”

“I s-saw the fox”, he chokes out, delirious from relief, and only caring for the boy in his arms and that he is alive, “I thought it t-tore you u-up. I-I...”

There are little arms around him, maybe arms that aren’t so little anymore, and he tries to hold back another sob, but the tears just keep rolling, and he spends a minute that feels like an eternity just crying in relief, until Sasuke shifts in pain in the bed next to them, and he wipes at his eyes to look at the other two. Tiny, and hurt, and lonely. Sage help me, he thinks, as he lets go off Naruto, pulling them into a hug too, and they yelp and protest for about two seconds before he can feel them melt against him, before he feels Sakura’s tears wet his uniform sleeve, and he cries with them for a long moment too.

People pass by outside, doctors who should be looking at these children, but have far too many injured and dead to notice them tucked away in here.

He hates this world.

“Hey, Iruka-sensei.”, he hears Naruto protest confusedly behind him, legs bumping into his back as he tries to swing them over the edge - there is barely enough room for him to crouch between the two beds as it is -, “Wasn’t that supposed to be a secret?”

He leans back, scrubbing at his face, trying to get his tears to finally stop rolling. The boy with the sweetest blue eyes squints at him, holding his tummy. “The fox being in me.”

Oh.

Iruka can feel himself go very pale, and clamps a hand over his mouth.

Oh-oh.

“Y-yes.”, he whispers, glancing at Sasuke and Sakura out of the corner of his eyes, who look confused and shocked at these words; they might not have connected the dots in the emotional upheaval if not for Naruto’s oblivious declaration, but, well, here they are. He remembers the day he taught them about the Yondaime sealing off the nine-tailed beast, the official version, the version that ends with the monster in a sword housed in the hokage tower, not in their classmate.

“What.”, Sasuke grits, another tremble going through him, “Does that mean, in you?”

“Uh, I’m a weapons scroll. Like paper.”, Naruto mutters. Iruka hangs his head with a quiet groan. If he isn't going to get dishonorably discharged for this, Kakashi will probably have his head for ruining team dynamics. He takes Sakura’s hand with a quiet sigh, molds his chakra, and begins to push a healing jutsu throughout to where he can feel her ribs have been bruised and the muscles in her back not quite torn.

“Naruto is the vessel for the nine-tailed beast, but this is a secret you are not supposed to know. In fact, he isn’t supposed to know either… it’s… classified, so please be careful not to tell anyone.”

“Unlike you.”, he can practically hear Naruto grin cheekily, and he whips his head around to glare at him.

“I thought you were dead, and I would have to collect parts of you from the forest, and bury them, and-”, he is choking off at the end again, big fat tears sliding down his face, and he makes his best effort to hold them back, sniffling into his own shoulder. He adds, almost petulantly, “Dumbass.”

Naruto's grin falters and disappears. Iruka turns back towards Sakura, trying to hold back another choked sob.

“How are you an adult?”, the ungrateful boy he’s been feeding and housing wraps his arms around his shoulders, sounding sad but loving, and he pretends he isn’t crying again as he finishes on Sakura’s ribs, watching her breathe more easily. Sasuke scoffs, and seems to give up on pretending to be okay, and lays down.

* * *

“Are you going to the hospital, Kakashi?”

He nods, watching Tenten help Lee to his feet somewhat awkwardly while throngs of people are escorted out by ANBU; Gai seems stuck between him and wanting to find Neji, so he adds, “They'll be there. I'm alright.”

His best friend sighs at him, still hesitating, so Kakashi takes out his wallet and holds out the condom he keeps for emergencies.

“Don’t forget to be a responsible adult with... Fumiko-chan, was it?”

“We are not-”

“We just survived an invasion, she is going to throw herself at you in ‘thank sage we are alive sex’. Take the damned condom, because I'm not babysitting any kid you manage to produce nine months from now.”

Gai frowns the frown when he knows Kakashi is right but really, really doesn't like it, and takes the offering with an embarrassed flush out of place for a man who has been falling into bed every other week with busty girls since they were sixteen. 

“I'll see you tomorrow morning at the assembly?”

Kakashi nods, and takes off for the hospital before Gai can change his mind about letting him go. He needs to know what happened to his kids, and now.

* * *

By the time Kakashi arrives, Iruka has sealed off Sasuke’s mark (memorized it for later analysis) and is busy with the fracture in his arm, blinking rapidly at the effort of healing so many injuries. None of them are life-threatening or urgent, but he doesn’t want them to have more pain than necessary.

“Oh honey”, the other man exhales as he sits down next to Iruka, his tone heavy, a slur of exhaustion at its edges despite the cajole. He is covered in blood and dirt, smells of sweat and explosions, and leans back against the dirty white wall to which the bed is pushed up to. “You wouldn’t believe the day I had at the office.”

Iruka turns around to him, finished on the arm.

“You need a bath.”, he cuts in before any of the children can say anything, “Get off the bed.”

Kakashi groans, sliding off and onto the floor with great theatricality, slumping against Iruka’s leg. It makes the genin smile fondly at him, a spot of normalcy among the chaos. He notes the cut on his forehead, and starts there with a sigh; he isn’t sure if he has the chakra to finish him too, not after Sakura and Sasuke, however small the number of injuries they had between them. His technique is far too crude for that. 

“You know you broke about two directives of classification, taking care of Sasuke’s mark, right?”, the other ungrateful person who he’s been feeding mumbles up at him, “And you are not an official medical personnel, so this tending to wounds thing is also against the rules. In fact… You are a very naughty sensei.”

Iruka pulls the grey hair back sharply, and Kakashi actually yelps.

“Thank you is the word you are looking for, Kakashi-sensei.”, Sakura reprimands him from the other side, sitting next to a cross-legged snickering Naruto. Iruka finishes the cut and moves on to a slash on the bicep, telling himself over and over that he can do this, he has one more in him, he can do the thigh as well, pulling what feel like the last dredges of his chakra from the tips of his toes. Just one more, just -

“Sandaime is dead.”, Kakashi says abruptly, quietly, looking up with that lone grey eye at them.

Iruka stops and stares at that unreadable face. It occurs to him that deep down he had known the moment the monument cracked, a clear slash on that familiar face, that he wouldn’t see his hokage alive again. There is nothing but emptiness in him anyway. No grief, no shock, no tears. 

Until the next breath, when the realization hits: they are a village without a leader, in the aftermath of one of the largest invasions ever experienced. There is a tinge of panic then, that faint memory of his grandmother telling him that everything he needs ought to be in one place, ready to go, because you never know when this village will fall apart, like Uzushio did. Always ready for the worst. (He had always followed this advice, that large scroll, like his father’s, standing in the corner of his safe room ready to go.) He wonders if he should get it, take Naruto and just _run_. Leave all of this shitstorm behind them, even though he knows they couldn’t disappear for long.

No, someone like him, alone, maybe. But not Naruto. Not someone as important a weapon as Naruto. He swallows the bile of this truth, and finishes his work on the bicep.

The room grows heavy with silence, and maybe the genin really have become Kakashi's soldiers, because they say nothing, no loud outbursts or anything other than wordless sorrow. He continues on to the shallow cut across Kakashi’s thigh, sitting between the jōnin’s legs for lack of space, and thinks about when he was younger; fight-fight-fight, heal with chakra, bandage and gauze and sew when you run out until you have some more, heal with chakra again. Rinse and repeat. After a while, the blood under his fingernails seemed to have become permanent. He doesn’t want to go back to that. 

Some time later, a haggard doctor-nurse pair bursts in, who are relieved to find most injuries healed and send Iruka home with a grateful reprimand, kicking Kakashi out along with him.


End file.
